Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Sotomayor: Top of her class at Princeton and editor of Yale Law Journal, but that won’t stop the Right pushing that she’s “not intellectually strong”… and that she’s an extremist, activist judge, blah, blah. Concerns: No one sees her as a liberal and I wonder about her diabetes.
She was backed by seven GOP’ers in her previous confirmation hearing- Richard Lugar, Olympia Snowe, Robert Bennett, Thad Cochran, Susan Collins, Orrin Hatch, and Judd Gregg (and Arlen Specter). The ultimate vote for her was 67-29. Baring a large surprise, she should win confirmation.
Her being a careful, moderate, non-ideologue:
Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial opinions are marked by diligence, depth and unflashy competence. If they are not always a pleasure to read, they are usually models of modern judicial craftsmanship, which prizes careful attention to the facts in the record and a methodical application of layers of legal principles.
Judge Sotomayor has issued no major decisions concerning abortion, the death penalty, gay rights or national security. In cases involving criminal defendants, employment discrimination and free speech, her rulings are more liberal than not.
But they reveal no larger vision, seldom appeal to history and consistently avoid quotable language. Judge Sotomayor’s decisions are, instead, almost always technical, incremental and exhaustive, considering all of the relevant precedents and supporting even completely uncontroversial propositions with elaborate footnotes.
All of which makes her remarkably cursory treatment last year of an employment discrimination case brought by firefighters in New Haven so baffling. The unsigned decision by Judge Sotomayor and two other judges, which affirmed the dismissal of the claims from 18 white firefighters, one of them Hispanic, contained a single paragraph of reasoning. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/us/politics/27judge.html?hp=&pagewanted=print
Reflecting well on Obama: Glenn Greenwald:
At his best, President Obama is guided by his central campaign promise: to change the way politics in Washington is conducted by refusing to allow the same set of small, homogenized, insular voices to dictate outcomes and by defying conventional Beltway wisdom. His selection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter is a perfect instance of his doing exactly that.
…There is much to learn about Judge Sotomayor before a complete assessment is possible, but what is known about the factors that President Obama considered reflects well on him. http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/obamas-first-choice-for-the-supreme-court/#glenn
John Yoo makes the Right’s case:
President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor shows that empathy has won out over excellence in the White House. Sotomayor has sterling credentials: Princeton, Yale Law School, former prosecutor, and federal trial and appellate judge. But credentials do not an excellent justice make. Justice Souter, whom Sotomayor would replace, had an equally fine c.v., but turned out to be a weak force on the high court.
Obama had some truly outstanding legal intellectuals and judges to choose from—Cass Sunstein, Elena Kagan, and Diane Wood come immediately to mind. The White House chose a judge distinguished from the other members of that list only by her race. Obama may say he wants to put someone on the Court with a rags-to-riches background, but locking in the political support of Hispanics must sit higher in his priorities.
Sotomayor’s record on the bench, at first glance, appears undistinguished. She will not bring to the table the firepower that many liberal academics are asking for. There are no opinions that suggest she would change the direction of constitutional law as have Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, or Robert Bork and Richard Posner on the appeals courts. Liberals have missed their chance to put on the Court an intellectual leader who will bring about a progressive revolution in the law.
But conservatives should not be pleased simply because Sotomayor is not a threat to the conservative revolution in constitutional law begun under the Reagan administration. Conservatives should defend the Supreme Court as a place where cases are decided by a faithful application of the Constitution, not personal politics, backgrounds, and feelings. Republican senators will have to conduct thorough questioning in the confirmation hearings to make sure that she will not be a results-oriented voter, voting her emotions and politics rather than the law. One worrying sign is Sotomayor’s vote to uphold the affirmative action program in New Haven, CT, where the city threw out a written test for firefighter promotions when it did not pass the right number of blacks and Hispanics. Senators should ask her whether her vote in that case, which is under challenge right now in the Supreme Court (where I signed an amicus brief for the Claremont Center on Constitutional Jurisprudence), was the product of her “empathy” rather than the correct reading of the Constitution. http://blog.american.com/?p=1187
California: Court upholds Same-Sex Marriage Ban Not surprising; a state supreme court doesn’t tend to overrule a popular vote. Undoubtedly it will return to the voters in the very near future. In the meantime, the necessary oddity of 18,000 valid marriages, but none allowed heneforth.
The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8's ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will continue to be married under state law.
The decision virtually ensures another fight at the ballot box over marriage rights for gays. Gay rights activists say they may ask voters to repeal the marriage ban as early as next year, and opponents have pledged to fight any such effort. Proposition 8 passed with 52% of the vote.
Although the court split 6-1 on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the justices were unanimous in deciding to keep intact the marriages of as many as 18,000 gay couples who exchanged vows before the election. The marriages began last June, after a 4-3 state high court ruling striking down the marriage ban last May.
Justice Ronald M. George, writing for the majority, said Proposition 8 did "not entirely repeal or abrogate" same-sex couples' right to privacy and due process or the "constitutional right of same-sex couples to 'choose one's life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized, and protected family relationship.'
"Instead, the measure carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights."
In an allusion to the state's domestic partners law, George noted that Proposition 8 left undisturbed "all of the other extremely significant substantive aspects of a same-sex couple's state constitutional right to establish an officially recognized and protected family relationship and the guarantee of equal protection under the laws."
In addition to rejecting the gay-rights lawyers' contention that Proposition 8 was an illegal constitutional revision, the court also flatly discarded Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown's argument that the measure was unconstitutional because it affected an "inalienable right."
But the court said "well-established legal principles" require that Proposition 8 be applied only prospectively, leaving intact same-sex marriages that occurred before the November election. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prop8-decision27-2009may27,0,7133277,print.story
Krugman: World Economy Improving More upbeat than his usual take:
The world economy has avoided "utter catastrophe" and industrialised countries could register growth this year, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman said on Monday.
"I will not be surprised to see world trade stabilise, world industrial production stabilise and start to grow two months from now," Krugman told a seminar.
"I would not be surprised to see flat to positive GDP growth in the United States, and maybe even in Europe, in the second half of the year."
The Princeton professor and New York Times columnist has said he fears a decade-long slump like that experienced by Japan in the 1990s.
He has criticised the US administration's bailout plan to persuade investors to help rid banks of up to $1 trillion in toxic assets as amounting to subsidised purchases of bad assets.
Speaking in UAE, the world's third-largest oil exporter, Krugman said Japan's solution of export-led growth would not work because the downturn has been global.
"In some sense we may be past the worst but there is a big difference between stabilising and actually making up the lost ground," he said. "We have averted utter catastrophe, but how do we get real recovery?
…Global recovery could come about through more investment by major corporations, the emergence of a major technological innovation to match the IT revolution of the 1990s or government moves on climate change.
"Legislation that will establish a capping grade system for greenhouse gases' emissions is moving forward," he said, referring to the US Congress.
"When the Europeans probably follow suit, and the Japanese, and negotiations begin with developing countries to work them into the system, that will provide enormous incentive for businesses to start investing and prepare for the new regime on emissions... But that's a hope, that's not a certainty." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/world-economy-stabilising-says-krugman-1690580.html
Economics: Potent Inflation Next? Many posit such and it makes sense. Richard Posner makes the case while looking at health care reform:
My own heretical view is that Americans are undertaxed, and so if I thought that the increase in the public debt was going to be financed by higher taxes I would not be upset. But Congress and the public seem adamant against tax increases, even when they take the form of closing ridiculous loopholes, and against spending reductions, even in ridiculous programs such as farm subsidies; and this combination of aversions makes it likely that increases in the public debt will be financed by a combination of continued borrowing, but at higher and higher interest rates, and inflation.
A bit of inflation can be a good thing in a depression, because it operates as a tax on cash balances and thus reduces hoarding and stimulates spending. But I am worrying about the inflation that hits after the depression, when the government decides that it can no longer finance the public debt by borrowing, cannot raise taxes, cannot cut spending, and is left with having to debase the currency. I would like to see greater efforts by the Administration and by the economics profession to determine, so far as may be possible to do, the gravity of this danger. http://correspondents.theatlantic.com/richard_posner/2009/05/the_aftershock_threat.php
GM To Make Cars in China… and sell them here?
Is part of law proceedings which GM has to do during its legal hearings, a document has come to light which shows that GM is planning to make cars in China and ship them to the US for sale. While it is unclear which model of GM’s cars figure in this process, but it plans to start with 17,335 cars in 2011 and go up to 51,546 units by 2014.
The document also states that there will be increased production in Mexico and South Korea. This means, in effect, the thought the US government may be funding GM one way or the other, and the US dealer and public are going to take a hit, more GM jobs are going to be outsourced to other countries.
Both US and Canada will be losers because GM’s cars are manufactured there and people will be losing jobs there. This is going to create a great deal of controversy. http://www.globalmotors.net/gm-plans-to-make-cars-in-china-and-sell-them-in-the-us/
