Obama’s dangerous Supreme Court nominee
by Rossputin | 2:19 am, May 27, 2009 | Comments Off
Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned. Obama has always said that the Constitution is essentially irrelevant, in the sense that it can and should mean whatever the newest, most liberal generation of activists in judges’ robes says it should mean.
And now we have the Supreme Court nominee to prove that Obama really meant it – and that elections have consequences.
Much fuss will be made over Sonia Sotomayor’s humble beginnings and Puerto Rican heritage, as if those things are qualifications for the nation’s (the world’s?) most important court. However, those beginnings and that heritage will remove the spine from enough Republicans that Sotomayor will have a relatively easy time getting approved.
For the record, I believe that the Senate should generally approve a president’s judicial nominations because that’s clearly a prerogative of winning an election unless the nominee is incompetent or was nominated through corruption, nepotism, etc.
But even a cursory look at some of Sotomayor’s decisions make one realize that she is a dangerous judge and one whose view of the importance of the Constitution is so twisted that she is, in my view, on the borderline of incompetence.
Most media discussion about Sotomayor’s judicial history is turning on a recent case in New Haven, Connecticut, where the city refused to promote firefighters after the results of the test created to judge who should be promoted ended up with no minorities passing the test. White firefighters sued, correctly saying that it was an obvious case of reverse discrimination. It has been widely reported that a highly respect judge on the same court, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, strongly criticized Sotomayor, saying that the 7-6 majority opinion essentially ignores “the weighty issues” involved in the appeal, particularly the weighty constitutional issues.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case and, with luck, will overturn Sotomayor’s decision from the Court of Appeals…just as they did on a 6-3 vote a few weeks ago in the case of Entergy v. Riverkeeper.
Riverkeeper is a case which should make supporters of property rights and of rational, limited government shudder. In that case, Sotomayor ruled that the EPA was not permitted to perform a cost/benefit analysis of technologies used to protect animals located near power plants. Instead, all that mattered was whether the industry could afford the “best” technology. The Supreme Court overruled Sotomayor, saying that the EPA could choose to use cost/benefit analysis. Can you imagine the implications for government and society if government agencies didn’t just avoid rational cost/benefit calculations from time to time, but were actually not permitted to make them?
Sotomayor has also cited international law or practices in her court decisions, another aspect of her approach which should frighten Americans.
A CNN review of Sotomayor’s rulings which have been heard by the Supreme Court shows that she is usually overruled, and that when she is not she is still often criticized for faulty logic or a faulty understanding of the law.
All in all, Sonia Sotomayor is exactly what we should have expected and feared from Barack Obama: A liberal activist who legislates from the bench, using any twisted logic she can find to squirm through existing law and obviate our Constitution.
Yes, Virginia, elections have consequences…
