Sotomayor’s ‘crime’: mild liberalism

Benighted Republican senators, angry because President Obama did not pick a Genghis Khan or an Attila the Hun for the Supreme Court, have trained their ire on poor Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Her crime? A smattering of liberalism in her decisions on the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Never mind that the Supreme Court is already packed with reactionaries, constantly voting 5-4, 5-4, 5-4, to strike down anything decent and humane and to uphold anything indecent and inhumane.

Jeffrey Toobin, in a recent New Yorker article, limned the Five Horsemen of Reaction led by Chief Justice Roberts. It sides “with the prosecution over the defendant, the state over the condemned, the executive branch over the legislature and the corporate defendant over the individual plaintiff.” It defers “to the existing power relationships in society.”

Justice Souter nailed Roberts when dissenting from an opinion the chief justice wrote. Souter said Roberts’ opinion reminded him of Anatole France’s observation that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread.”

Obama as an Illinois senator voted against confirmation of Roberts, correctly declaring that Roberts uses “his formidible skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak.”

“I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook,” Obama said. “It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives.”

Which is where Judge Sotomayor is perfect. She understands the struggles of so many Americans. Roberts in his ivory tower and smug comfort will never understand that reality.

Sotomayor was born in the Bronx, New York, to Puerto Rican parents. She was brought up in a housing project, providing the empathy that Obama seeks.

However, her understanding of the Little People gets her into trouble with GOP troglodytes. In a 2001 speech, Sotomayor said: “a wise Latina with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

She is being reviled as racist for speaking the truth. Roberts, in contrast, epitomizes nearly all lawyers and judges: howling conservatives.

Supreme Court history is full of reactionary decisions favoring business and property against the needs of people and the humanism of civilized nations. It has so often blinked at reality and found its retrograde politics in the Constitution.

Just a few examples among so many: 1) Dred Scott [1857] held that slaves were property, inferior beings and “had no rights the white man was bound to respect.” 2) In Adkins [1923] the court struck down a Washington, D.C., minimum wage.

3) In Coppage v. Kansas [1915] the court called yellow-dog contracts--forced vows not to join a union--constitutional. The court gleefully noted that “some people have more property than others,” “the right of private property” was paramount and that “inequalities of fortune” are just.

4) In Hammer v. Dagenhart [1918] the court declared child labor constitutional. 5) In two years it struck down 10 major New Deal laws--judicial nullification without parallel in U.S. history. 6) In Bush v. Gore [2000] the court, in a partisan political decision that had nothing to do with the law. stopped the Florida recount to hand the presidency to G.W. Bush.

Sotomayor would bring much more to the court then mere knowledge of the underside of life. She is smart, compassionate and thoughtful.

Roberts, at 54 a young man as Supreme Court justices go, could plague the country for decades. But at least Sotomayor would inject the same compassion shown by Justices Stevens, Ginsburg and Souter in their heated dissents.

On the appeals bench, Sotomayor ruled for baseball players, not the owners. She ruled that homeless people must be paid the minimum wage. She held that an inmate could sue a corporation operating a halfway house for federal prisoners.

She ruled that a broker who held stocks because of misleading information could sue. She wrote that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot use cost-benefit calculations to preserve aquatic species.

She dissented when her appeals court upheld the legality of strip searches for girls at a juvenile detention center in Connecticut. She called it what it was: embarrassing and humilating.

Nevertheless, Sotomayor is hardly a flaming liberal. She was wrong to side with New Haven, Conn., when it rejected results of a firefighter promotion test because blacks and Latinos performed poorly. Her abortion position is unclear, having decided few pro-choice cases and all those on the fringes of Roe.

But no justice ever scores 100 percent. Sotomayor is a good choice to replace the retiring Souter.