Sotomayor announcement marred by the usual crap
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is applauded by President God and his sidekick, the Talking Donkey.
I was glad to wake up this afternoon to news of the Sotomayor pick, and I hope she’s confirmed. You know where I stand on this: every vacancy to the Court needs to be filled by a woman until we have parity. As far as I can tell, Sotomayor is fairly liberal (though there are some murky bits).
But this stuff, this. Aaghh:
Common Ground in Obama, Sotomayor Life Stories
As he stood beside Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama did more than simply name his first choice for an appointment to the Supreme Court. He told a story – her life story – that reverberated with echoes of his own narrative that propelled him to the White House.In introducing Ms. Sotomayor to the nation, Mr. Obama — who has mastered the art of creating and employing a personal narrative to political ends — suddenly assumed the role of narrator-in-chief. He ticked through Judge Sotomayor’s biography in great detail, suggesting that her path would provide one of the most compelling ways of building support for her confirmation to the Supreme Court.
“As impressive and meaningful as Judge Sotomayor’s sterling credentials in the law is her own extraordinary journey,” the president said. “Born in the South Bronx, she was raised in a housing project not far from Yankees Stadium, making her a lifelong Yankees fan.”
It’s never gonna stop, is it? This whole goddamn presidency is going to be a four-year-long Pepperidge Farm commercial.
The president presented her story as a fresh chapter of the American dream, which sounded much like that of his wife, Michelle, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, but also went to Princeton and then on to Harvard Law School. The couple’s experiences were retold again and again on the campaign trail, and now as First Lady, Mrs. Obama often uses her trajectory in inspirational talks before students.
Both women’s fathers held blue-collar jobs: Mrs. Obama’s father was a city pump operator. Judge Sotomayor’s father was a factory worker, a man with a third-degree education who did not speak English. When he died, Mr. Obama said, Ms. Sotomayor’s mother worked six days a week as a nurse and bought encyclopedias so her two children could become anything they wanted to be.
“Here in America,” the president said, “all things are possible.”
Instead of dwelling on more than a decade’s worth of work at the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York City, Mr. Obama turned to a childhood tale of how Ms. Sotomayor first became fascinated with the law by reading the mystery series of Nancy Drew, the amateur young detective who fought crime in the fictional town of River Heights.
Emphasis added by me. See, I’m kind of interested in that decade’s worth of work on the Court of Appeals. I am a little bit more interested in that than in the Nancy Drew thing, to be honest; no offense to Nancy Drew. Frankly, this whole business of focusing on personal life stories would be a lot less obnoxious if it hadn’t already been abused by Obama to get himself elected. I feel like our whole country has turned into one of those Olympics mini-documentaries on the athletes, those Up Close and Personal background things with the poignant music and moody shots of the young athlete bravely trudging to the ice rink/track field/swimming pool for practice despite his or her entire family having been killed in a plane crash as they flew from their home in the cancer ward to watch their young hopeful at the National Finals. As a matter of fact, I predict here and now that some day Olympics medals will be awarded not on the basis of who wins the competition, but on who has the most compelling life story. The athletes won’t even have to bother with the skating or running or swimming. The judges will just watch the weepy tinkly videos and score them on artistic merit, degree of personal misfortune, distance the young athlete has to trudge to the ice rink/track field/swimming pool, and so forth.
Ahem.
At least Obama didn’t compare his own background to Sotomayor’s, though that didn’t stop his fan base from doing so. Somebody at ScienceBlogs today said that “Sotomayor’s life story in many ways mirrors that of the president himself…She was raised by a single mother in a decidedly unprivileged environment but ended up graduating summa cum laude from Princeton University and went on to Yale Law School.” Right. Except that Obama’s mother had a Ph.D. in anthropology, his stepfather was a government relations consultant, and his grandmother was a bank vice-president who sent him to private school.
But back to Sotomayor and those Nancy Drew-less years on the Court of Appeals. SCOTUSblog has a good summary of Sotomayor’s appellate opinions on all sorts of interesting things, like abortion, privacy, discrimination, and so forth. In Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush, she upheld the Bush gag rule on abortion, writing that “the Supreme Court has made clear that the government is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds.” Well, I guess that’s that, then.
I await appropriate analysis from a feminist legal expert.
17 Responses to “Sotomayor announcement marred by the usual crap”
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Ann Bartow says:
Well, if she hadn’t ruled as she did in Center for Reproductive Law & Policy v. Bush http://openjurist.org/304/f3d/.....y-v-w-bush she would have been “corrected” either by an en banc panel of the Second Circuit or by SCOUTS itself. She was following SCOTUS precedent in Rust v. Sullivan, http://openjurist.org/500/us/173
She could have expressed disagreement with the statute at issue in the context of ruling the exact same way I guess, but that wouldn’t have accomplished anything except undermine her “neutrality.” I wouldn’t take this as a bad omen necessarily.May 26th, 2009 at 6:55 pm EST -
Branjor says:
Excellent post, Violet! Since I have nothing to add at this time, I will just nitpick one thing in Obama’s illiterate statement on Sotomayor’s growing up years. I grew up in the same neighborhood she did, and it is Yankee Stadium, not “Yankees Stadium.”
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Ann Bartow says:
In other words, her decision wasn’t about upholding the gag rule, it was about following precedent. Which is what judges are supposed to do unless they think they must undo an injustice by criticizing precedent and refusing to follow it, in the hopes that some Sup Ct Justices could be swayed and the relevant law(s) changed. Here, even if Sotomayor had gone the “activist judge” route and refused to follow Rust v. Sullivan she wouldn’t have had any hope that even if she could get the issue back before SOCTUS, enough Justices would flip their votes to alter the outcome.
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Violet says:
In other words, her decision wasn’t about upholding the gag rule, it was about following precedent. Which is what judges are supposed to do unless they think they must undo an injustice by criticizing precedent and refusing to follow it, in the hopes that some Sup Ct Justices could be swayed and the relevant law(s) changed. Here, even if Sotomayor had gone the “activist judge” route and refused to follow Rust v. Sullivan she wouldn’t have had any hope that even if she could get the issue back before SOCTUS, enough Justices would flip their votes to alter the outcome.
That is exactly what I thought. But not being a lawyer, I didn’t want to speculate like an idiot. Thank you very much for spelling it out.
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yttik says:
Good post, Violet. You hit many of the points I’ve been thinking about.
I think she’s a well qualified, highly experienced, centrist. So centrist in fact, a real liberal would call her right leaning, but by the time the Republicans have finished wailing about what a liberal activist she is, the Left will have convinced themselves they have actually “won” something.
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Violet says:
So centrist in fact, a real liberal would call her right leaning, but by the time the Republicans have finished wailing about what a liberal activist she is, the Left will have convinced themselves they have actually “won” something.
I’ve been puzzling over how liberal she really is. The guy who runs SCOTUSblog says her decisions put her on the left side of the fence, and given the current judicial climate, I guess that’s true. I guess. But reading through the survey of her opinions, I was not overwhelmed with an impression of leftness. More like centrist. Or perhaps she’s just mostly interested in the meticulous application of precedent and existing law. It’s weird that she’s being painted as an “activist” judge, because I’m not seeing that at all.
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Keri says:
I certainly see her as right leaning, there’s the Global Gag Rule decision (and I’m not giving her an out of that, on a racial discrimination decision she bucked the majority opinion. the only point she shows liberalism is on racial discrimination issues. She’s made several bad pro corporate decisions against entirely reasonable suggestions by the EPA (itself hardly an example of progressive environmental policies) she’s also made decisions that favored corporate interests over labor unions. I’m definitely not in any hallelujah chorus with her overall judicial history. Even one of my coworkers who went into a late mild case of Obotism (after supporting Hillary wholeheartedly during the primaries) is equally unhappy about Sotomayer’s judicial history. (the thrill is completely gone for her about Obama too.)
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slythwolf says:
WTF does Nancy Drew have to do with the law anyway? I have read some of those books.
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Sweet Sue says:
Well, Nancy’s father was a lawyer.
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Sweet Sue says:
His name was Carson Drew and he was (sigh) dreamy.
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sister of ye says:
This whole goddamn presidency is going to be a four-year-long Pepperidge Farm commercial.
At least Peppridge Farm makes cookies to die for. I haven’t yet found similar redeeming social value in the Obama presidency.
I’m hearing many contradictory things about Sotomayor. So far she looks like a “it could’ve been worse, it could’ve been Cass Sustein” kind of pick. Still SC justices have a record of often bucking expectations. Perhaps she’ll do that in a good way.
Re the smears against Sotomayor: Whatever happened to “the president is entitled to his picks” that we heard about Roberts and Scalia? A lot of Dems mouthed that pablum and voted to confirm.
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FLAConnie says:
Please pardon my naivete, in advance. My first reaction to Obama’s choice of Sotomayor was YAY, he chose a Latina woman. That was immediately followed by, she’s going to be a sacrificial lamb to make his REAL #1 choice have an easier confirmation.
Despite Obama’s many faults, he’s a master at gaming the political system. By selecting a woman, I think he hopes to silence the “feminists”, especially in Congress. After all – HE TRIED to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court. But she will be pilloried as liberal (despite her on the record decisions) and too caring/empathetic (ah, the emotional woman) and therefore can’t be considered to be objective. She will be “Borked” and Obama’s REAL choice will be confirmed. I hope I’m wrong.
Having been schooled as a scientist, the word OBJECTIVE was beaten into me. Over the years that word has become like fingernails on a chalkboard. IMHO, to be completely objective is to be something other than human. We are colored by our background, our herstory/history, our very experiences. In the best of cases those experiences give us insight, perspective and understanding and, yes, empathy. They connect us to the experience of others and to our own “humanness.” On some level, Sotomayor seems to understand this, based on a speech she gave several years ago (and cited on NPR yesterday).
And one final thought: as a girl growing up in the 50s, there were very few heroines and Nancy Drew was one of them. She served as a role model of a young woman who stepped outside the typical role of girls portrayed everywhere else. Sotomayor, IMHO, picked an excellent role model.
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Rebecca says:
Despite Obama’s many faults, he’s a master at gaming the political system. By selecting a woman, I think he hopes to silence the “feminists”, especially in Congress. After all – HE TRIED to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court.
I really don’t think that’s what’s going on here. I compare it to Harriet Miers – someone who was woefully underqualified, and completely obviously so, put up for public approval. And next, it’s ‘see? I tried to put a woman up.’
Sotomayor is different, she IS qualified, and I do agree with the rationale for her opinions.
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Adrienne in CA says:
All I know is that I got a sick feeling when I read he’d nominated yet another Catholic. That’ll be six of nine.
I too look forward to credible analysis of Sotomayor’s past and likely rulings. Not that it makes any difference. The circus over which “side” is attacking/defending her will dominate. If need be, Dick Cheney will make a speech.
When do we get to the post-AstroTurf Era?
*****A
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Elise says:
I loved this post. I was watching CNN yesterday and they did a “cute” little segment showing footage of Obama announcing Sotomayor with narration that focused on how choked up her mother was about her being nominated and the fact that her bangs were falling into her eyes and making her blink. Sigh. And a couple of days ago I read an article – which I cannot now find again – that said after listening to Obama’s introduction the writer realized Obama had nominated himself – or at least his version of his own life story. Sigh again.
In an interesting collision of uncertainty about where she stands on abortion and FLAConnie’s cynicism about Obama, I ran across this article this morning: Sotomayor’s Thin Abortion Record Puts Dem Senators In A Bind. Interesting if Obama ends up being able to get double credit: once for nominating a woman and once for withdrawing her name when it turns out she’s not firm enough on Roe v Wade.
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soopermouse says:
@Interesting if Obama ends up being able to get double credit: once for nominating a woman and once for withdrawing her name when it turns out she’s not firm enough on Roe v Wade.@
Don’t make me laugh please. Obama does NOT care about Roe, and only has pretended to be in order to gain votes.
My opinion of Sotomayor goes as folows@ Obama likes her- so what’s wrong with her@She’s a trap. I bet his thinking was- she is a woman AND latina so nobody will complain about her pro corporatist record because they don’t want to appear racists. She might look like a Liberal if one looks from the right- which kinda tells us where is Obama looking from.
I’m very very afraid. Since we ARE talking Obama, you should be too -
Elise says:
I would never argue that Obama cares about Roe (but then I’m not sure I would ever argue that Obama cares about anything but Obama – and the wife and kids, of course). What I meant was that if FLAConnie is right that Sotomayor is a straw woman (maybe stalking horse is more what I mean) who has been nominated in the expectation that she will not be confirmable AND who does not unquestioningly support Roe, then Obama can garner double points from women (well, Institutional Feminists): one point for nominating a woman and another point for withdrawing her name when her views on Roe become known.
Although, having written all that down, it sounds a little too far-fetched, doesn’t it? I have to say, though, that it would fit Obama’s pattern of proposing something then backing down if his proposal generates static.
I don’t have a clear view of Sotomayor. I lean Right (Violet kindly lets me hang around because I try to behave myself) and I understand the Right’s reservations about her. Although I haven’t confirmed the details, I also hear she found for the New York Times against a bunch of underpaid writers who claimed their work was unfairly used; if true, I’m not crazy about this: I believe firmly in the importance of intellectual property rights. Like everyone else, I have no idea where she stands on Roe. What I’d really like to know, though, is where she stands on expansive powers for the President. I just hope her confirmation hearings actually yield some information about her.
