By Mathew D. Staver, Liberty Counsel
Today President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the seat of retiring Justice David Souter. If confirmed, Sotomayor would become the first Hispanic and third woman to serve on the High Court. Sotomayor is a graduate of Princeton and obtained her law degree from Yale. She served in private practice and as Assistant District Attorney in New York County and was nominated to the Second Circuit federal Court of Appeals by President George H. W. Bush in 1991. Despite 17 years on the bench, Sotomayor has never directly decided whether a law regulating abortion is constitutional. In Center for Reproductive Law & Policy v. Bush, she wrote an opinion that upheld the Mexico City Policy prohibiting federal funding of overseas abortions. Sotomayor does not believe that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies to individuals. While on a panel discussion at Duke Law School, she argued that the "Court of Appeals is where policy is made." Judge Sotomayor has had 5 decisions reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, 3 of which have been reversed. She has carried 11 of 44 possible votes during those cases. In Knight v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Chief Justice Roberts stated that her method of reading the statute in question "flies in the face of the statutory language." She has written in support of Affirmative Action, upheld the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and in Amandola v. Town of Babylon, she wrote that denying use of a town hall annex for their worship services violated the First Amendment. She has written a book called "The International Judge," which suggests that international law and policy should be considered in some court decisions. Some have described her temperament on the bench as a "bully" and "abusive" to lawyers.
Hopefully, if they can't find any tax problems in her past, this will contribute to the demise of her Supreme Court Judgeship hopes.
