The push on the right, as we’ve seen, is that Sonia Sotomayor is the dread ‘judicial activist’, someone who uses the vast powers of a judgeship or, potentially, a spot on the top court to ‘legislate’ from the bench or impose her own policy or ideological vision on the country. Some of that is conservative judicial boilerplate. But clearly there are different kinds of judges on the right and left — ones who stick more tightly to cobbling together decisions from existing precedent and others with a more expansive and ambitious judicial philosophy.
Unfortunately for Republicans, though, Sotomayor seems to be in the former camp. This is the upshot of Adam Liptak’s piece in this morning’s Times, who writes, in part …
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.
…
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.
What Liptak is saying here doesn’t line up precisely with the activist vs. not activist question. But it strongly suggests this is not someone who falls into the more expansive, activist category. And if that’s borne out by the coming scrutiny of her record, it suggests that the GOP line on her may be even more feeble than one might expect.
