Liberal Law Professor: Sotomayor Either Perjuring Herself or Unqualified

He's not addressing her Wise Latina denials, but rather her claim that judging involves nothing but application of the law to facts. She says this, of course, to denigrate the role her racialist ideology might play in her decision-making; if it's nothing but facts and already-settled law, then there's little room for mischief.

She's denying that there exists something called "theory of jurisprudence," which includes such doctrines as originalism, strict constructionism, and, of course, the ever-flexible and ever-expanding doctrine of the "Living Constitution." As she doesn't want to admit she's an adherent of the latter, she claims there's no such thing as judicial philosophy whatsoever.

For example, faced with a legal question about which the Constitution is absolutely silent, a conservative justice would say there is no Constitutional dictate either way: A law is permitted to exist; it is also permissible to have no law. Lacking a constitutional source of authority, a judge herself has no authority to set policy.

On the other hand, someone like Sotomayor does not stop her inquiry simply because she finds that she has no authority whatsoever to make a ruling that binds anyone. She then looks to international law; the always-popular "changing social mores and norms;" "public policy considerations;" anagrams of Ricky Martin song titles; etc.

So, yeah, she's lying. Or else she's so stupid she doesn't even realize she's making a choice about judicial philosophy at all -- like man of the stupid and liberal (BIRM) she is entirely unaware that there is any other philosophy than the one she believes in, to the point where she denies it's a philosophy or choice at all and believes it to be simply the natural and inevitable order of things.*

But it's not as untrue as her claim that she meant anything other than what she seemed to mean in when she said a wise Latina, with the richness of her experience, would more often than not come to a better conclusion than a white man.

But I'll take it.

Oh, and she also lies about what she said previously about international law "informing" US constitutional law.

Andy McCarthy also confesses that Sotomayor is changing her story so much that "it's not the easiest thing for a simple white guy — at least this one — to keep up with a wise Latina."

A wise Latina, she previously said, would "choose to see" different facts than a non-Latina. This wise Latina is giving full proof to that as she "chooses to see" an awful lot of "facts" about her judicial philosophy and her previous statements that others plainly don't.

* See Peart, Neil, et al., "Freewill."

posted by Ace at 09:30 PM

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