Obama nominates NewyoRican female to SCOTUS

[Imran Siddiqui]

Indeed. CJ Marshall is one of the most important people in the early years of the United States, but he isn't put in the pantheon.

[DinoDoc]

You're engaging in a childish and stupid sidestep of your original point which was you decrying people who called this an identity based pick as being racist and or sexist.

My original point was about relative qualifications. Keep up.

No one has been calling into question her qualifications. RTFT.

[The Mad Monk]

So Republicans are saying that it's okay if they can appoint a conservative-biased justice to U.S. Supreme Court, but that it's wrong for Democrats to appoint a liberal-biased justice to U.S. Supreme Court.

I mean, if qualifications is not the issue, then I guess the above is what is the real issue?

Yes, that's the real issue, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Liberals want a liberal-leaning justice, they are free to nominate one. Conservatives are free to block. Discourse ensues. Eventually a candidate that both sides can live with is chosen. Nothing wrong with that.

What's wrong is a lot of folks demanding that the conservatives abdicate their role in the process.

[The Mad Monk]

Sotomayor Ruled in "D-Bag Case" Ruled teen's blog post created a created "foreseeable risk of substantial disruption"

By YVONNE NAVA and LEANNE GENDREAU

Updated 12:16 PM EDT, Thu, May 28, 2009
Related Topics: Sonia Sotomayor



Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor was named by U.S. President Barack Obama as his choice to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court.


President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill a Supreme Court vacancy has yet another tie to Connecticut. She sided against a student in the infamous “douche bag” case, and that has upset some free-speech advocates.



In August 2007, Judge Sonia Sotomayor sat on a panel that ruled against an appeal in Doninger v. Niehoff.

Avery Doninger was disqualified from running for school government at Lewis S. Mills High School in Burlington after she posted something on her blog, referring to the superintendent and other officials as "douche bags" because they canceled a battle of the bands she had helped to organize.

The case went to court and in March 2008, Sotomayor was on a panel that heard Doninger’s mother’s appeal alleging her daughter’s free speech and other rights were violated. Her mother wanted to prevent the school from barring her daughter from running.

Sotomayor joined two other judges from the 2nd Circuit in ruling that the student’s off-campus blog remarks created a “foreseeable risk of substantial disruption” at the student’s high school and that the teenager was not entitled to a preliminary injunction reversing a disciplinary action against her, Education Week reports.

In their opinion, the judges said they were “sympathetic" to her disappointment at being disqualified from running for Senior Class Secretary and acknowledged her belief that in this case, “the punishment did not fit the crime.”

However, the judges decided they were not called upon to determine if school officials acted wisely.

“As the Supreme Court cautioned years ago, “[t]he system of public education that has evolved in this Nation relies necessarily upon the discretion and judgment of school administrators and school board members,” and we are not authorized to intervene absent “violations of specific constitutional guarantees.”
Related Stories

The ruling in this case has come under heavy criticism from some civil libertarians. Some say this case presents a solid rationale for rejecting Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals to fill the seat of retiring Justice David Souter.

“The continual expansion of the authority of school officials over student speech teaches a foul lesson to these future citizens,” Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, told the New Britain Herald. “I would prefer some obnoxious speech [rather] than teaching students that they must please government officials if they want special benefits or opportunities.”

Copyright Associated Press / NBC Connecticut

http://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/Critics-unhappy-with-Sotomayors-role-in-CT-free-speech-case.html

Big case? Absolutely not. I think it does give an idea her veiws regarding individual speech versus the interests of the state.

[SpencerH]

She had five times more experience on the Court of Appeals than Roberts. She was also on a District Court for several years. Roberts' experience as SC mitigates his rather short tenure at the Appellate level (though not as short as Thomas). Roberts is superbly qualified as well. Asserting that she's substantially less qualified is ridiculous nonsense.

I mistakenly included Alito and Roberts along with Scalia as having the most diverse legal experience prior to the Supreme Court. Thanks to your information that they were only adjunct faculty I changed my opinion of their academic expertise and included Alito and Roberts in the group with Souter, Thomas, and Sotomayor who had substantial private legal experience but no academic qualifications (adjunct doesnt cut it IMO). I pointed out, however, that both Alito and Roberts argued cases before the Supreme Court while Sotomayor did not. Sotomayor's non-judicial legal experience is in intellectual property litigation (according to wiki). That combined with the minimal academic experience suggests to me that she had limited experience in constitutional law prior to her appointment to the bench. You appear to deem that fact unimportant to consider (since you ignore the point) in this discussion of the Justices relative experiences, while I do not.

At no point have I said that Sotomayor is substantially less qualified than anyone. Given that there are no constitutional requirements for Supreme Court Justice any claim of "qualifications" one way or another is moot. None of them are "superbly qualified", they are all qualified. Scalia remains the sitting Justice with the most diverse experience prior to their appointments to the bench, however.

Its just such a waste of time trying to discuss anything online when posters refuse to read and then continue to throw out strawmen.

TA TA. I wont be back.

[Kuciwalker]

For one particular seat in the context of stark under-representation, particularly wrt gender. Yes.

I can show how Thomas did

That wasn't the question. Thomas has a tiny fraction of the appellate experience that Sotomayor has. Can you answer mine? Marshall and O'Connor.

No, as I don't really know much of anything about either.

Really? Why do you suppose that most of the justices are Catholic?

Wait, white men = catholics and catholics = white men?

Ever read up on why Scalia was picked by Reagan over Bork?

Because Bork wasn't confirmed? That seems like a pretty good reason...

[Ramo]

Wait, white men = catholics and catholics = white men?

No. White men can be, and have been nominated through identity politics, if they had the right identity (i.e. Southern, part of the Nixon coalition, or Catholic, part of the Reagan coalition).



The only non-Catholic justices appointed by Reagan/Bush/Bush appear to be O'Connor and Souter.

Because Bork wasn't confirmed?

What? Scalia was nominated a couple years before Bork. Hint: identity politics didn't magically start and stop with the coloreds. As for why Bork wasn't confirmed, it probably had more to with the decline in power of the Reagan Admin after the '86 midterms than anything else.

At no point have I said that Sotomayor is substantially less qualified than anyone.

Spare me your histrionics. You did say this:
"I do feel, however, that (as with Thomas) she may always be viewed as a "second class Justice" who obtained the position based on affirmative action rather than merit, and I think that weakens the court."
Which is bull****.

You appear to deem that fact unimportant to consider (since you ignore the point) in this discussion of the Justices relative experiences, while I do not.

You deem appellate experience (of which Sotomayor has a great deal more of than Roberts) as irrelevant. I think both are relevant, and see no obvious reason to prefer one background over another.

No one has been calling into question her qualifications. RTFT.

I said relative qualifications, which a number of people have obviously been talking about. See above for an example.

[Arrian]

Kudos to TMM for bringing up a Sotomayor decision (others have mentioned the Ricci case off-hand, but didn't go anywhere with it).

I have to run, but maybe - just maybe - we can make this thread about her track record.

-Arrian

[Kuciwalker]

No. White men can be, and have been nominated through identity politics, if they had the right identity (i.e. Southern or Catholic).

That's not what I said. I said white men can't have an identity (i.e. as white men, not as some unrelated thing).

[Drake Tungsten]

I have to run, but maybe - just maybe - we can make this thread about her track record.

Her track record doesn't matter. Just confirm her!

[Ramo]

That's not what I said. I said white men can't have an identity (i.e. as white men, not as some unrelated thing).

Italian-American is unrelated to being white? Really?

Did you know that "minority-American" isn't a strong identity either?

[Kuciwalker]

Italian-American is unrelated to being white? Really?

alk;sfjadfsda

Are you being deliberately obtuse?

1) It's certainly not related to being male.

2) I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT IDENTITIES THAT HAVE OVERLAP WITH "WHITE MALES". I'M TALKING ABOUT THE IDENTITY "WHITE MALE".

[Ramo]

I know what you're saying. I'm explaing why your "point" is dumb.

[Elok]

The whining of some other white men on this site is pathetic considering our race's history of enjoying an unfair status quo.

Because, of course, we all unanimously agreed at a midnight meeting to oppress the dark folk...how does your logic differ from a little boy punching his brother and justifying it with "he hit me first"?

[DinoDoc]

I have to run, but maybe - just maybe - we can make this thread about her track record.

Her track record doesn't matter. Just confirm her!

Indeed. It might be interesting to have a member of The Race on the Court.