The Sotomayor Tapes

Politico has obtained and published audio of appeal hearings presided over by U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

The tapes are a fascinating study of the appellate process.

For what its worth, I'm not hearing much at all in the way of the storied "temperament" issues regarding Justice Sotomayor, in spite of the headline of the Politico story that introduces the audio recordings, Court Tapes Show Blunt Sotomayor.

She appears to be an astute, informed and assertive judge, who asks challenging and probing questions that keep counsel on their toes - which, of course, is exactly what an appellate Judge ought to be doing.

In other words, the temperament storyline is yet another instance of a manufactured Republican talking point that now, quite properly, will bite the dust.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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When America Selects a Supreme Court Judge...

(h/t - Red Tory)

Also see: Sotomayor, Franken both 'Perry Mason' fans

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Sotomayor - Running A "Hot Bench"

On Justice Sotomayor's courtroom demeanour:

“They call it a hot bench when a judge asks a lawyer a lot of questions — well, she isn’t afraid of running a hot bench,” said H. Raymond Fasano, Republican immigration lawyer who has appeared before her 24 times, mostly in asylum cases, and is a fan. “When a judge asks a lot of questions, that means she’s read the record, she knows the issues and she has concerns that she wants resolved. And that’s the judge’s job.”

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

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Judging Sotomayor (in One Sentence or Less)

Scholars, lawyers and even one of our favourite U.S. law bloggers weigh in on Justice Sotomayor's judicial record in a New Yok Times article today.

See Sotomayor’s Appellate Opinions Are Unpredictable, Lawyers and Scholars Say.

The article falls quite a bit short.

Reducing complex appellate judicial opinions into single sentence decision-bites for the purpose of pigeonholing "whose side a judge is on" strikes me as neither an illuminating nor academically honest pursuit.

It may simply be an American rite-of-passage around Supreme Court nominations, but as Walter Olsen correctly implies in the Times article, such analysis is unlikely to lead to much more than uninformed caricature attacks. 

This brand of commentary is, of course, not without its own irony, given the ready propensity of Justice Sotomayor's critics to cast aspersions on the nominee's own intellectual depth.

- Garry J. Wise, Toronto

Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net

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