Initial Thoughts on the Sotomayor Pick:
Two initial thoughts on the Sotomayor pick.
First, it's not a big surprise: Sotomayor has long been thought to be a possible Supreme Court pick for a Democratic President. Indeed, a quick google search pulls up some of the stories of how GOP Senators tried to slow down her nomination to the Second Circuit in 1997-98 precisely because she would be a logical pick to the Supreme Court someday. For example, here's Neil Lewis in the New York Times on June 13, 1998:
Second, at this point I would think Sotomayor is very likely to be confirmed. I don't know a ton about Sotomayor, but her resume hints at someone who is sort of like a liberal mirror image of Samuel Alito: the humble kid who goes to Princeton and Yale Law, becomes a prosecutor, and then gets appointed at a young age to the federal bench and puts in 15 years as a respected (if not particularly high profile) federal judge. In some ways, that makes Sotomayor a pretty conservative pick: Her resume is the kind of very accomplished resume that Supreme Court picks have tended to have in the last two decades or so. Given the make-up of the Senate, and the absence of surprise, I would imagine at this point that Sotomayor is very likely to be confirmed.
First, it's not a big surprise: Sotomayor has long been thought to be a possible Supreme Court pick for a Democratic President. Indeed, a quick google search pulls up some of the stories of how GOP Senators tried to slow down her nomination to the Second Circuit in 1997-98 precisely because she would be a logical pick to the Supreme Court someday. For example, here's Neil Lewis in the New York Times on June 13, 1998:
Judge Sonia Sotomayor seemed like a trouble-free choice when President Clinton nominated her to an appeals court post a year ago. Hers was an appealing story: a child from the Bronx housing projects who went on to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton and become editor of the Yale Law Journal and then a Federal prosecutor.(To be clear, both parties play this game when they smell a potential SCOTUS nominee; I point out the 1998 story just to point out that Sotomayor was always known as a possible pick.)
Moreover, she had been a trial judge since 1992, when she was named to the bench by the last Republican president, George Bush.
But Republican senators have been blocking Judge Sotomayor's elevation to the appeals court for a highly unusual reason: to make her less likely to be picked by Mr. Clinton for the Supreme Court, senior Republican Congressional aides said in interviews.
Second, at this point I would think Sotomayor is very likely to be confirmed. I don't know a ton about Sotomayor, but her resume hints at someone who is sort of like a liberal mirror image of Samuel Alito: the humble kid who goes to Princeton and Yale Law, becomes a prosecutor, and then gets appointed at a young age to the federal bench and puts in 15 years as a respected (if not particularly high profile) federal judge. In some ways, that makes Sotomayor a pretty conservative pick: Her resume is the kind of very accomplished resume that Supreme Court picks have tended to have in the last two decades or so. Given the make-up of the Senate, and the absence of surprise, I would imagine at this point that Sotomayor is very likely to be confirmed.