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More on Sonia Sotomayor

Obviously miffed by the Jeffrey Rosen profile of Sonia Sotomayor mentioned here the other day, in which anonymous sources called her dumb, Rob Kar, who clerked for Sotomayor on the Second Circuit, mounts a preposterously over-the-top defense:

Let me start with the obvious conclusion that anyone would draw if they were to get to know Judge Sotomayor and her work both intimately and deeply: she is an absolutely brilliant jurist and an absolutely brilliant person...

I count myself privileged to have worked closely with some of the very best minds in the world... Judge Sotomayor stands out from among these people as one of the very brightest; indeed, she is in that rarified class of people for whom it makes sense to say that there is no one genuinely smarter... Judge Sotomayor is much smarter than most people in the legal academy, and much smarter than most judges who are granted almost universal deference in situations like this. And while I have worked with numerous people who are thought of as some of the best minds in the nation, and about whom the question of brilliance would never even arise, most of them are-quite frankly-pedantic in comparison.

Sotomayor is so smart that even the world's smartest people aren't smart enough to comprehend her towering smartness!

Snark aside, the comments to Kar's post recommend a couple of Sotomayor's dissents as examples of her thinking. Her dissent in Hankins v. Lyght is indeed persuasive, and I suspect it will be passed around by her advocates in part because it uses the words "judicial restraint." (Suffice it to say that the majority opinion is a convoluted mess, and one needn't be "absolutely brilliant" to take it apart.) Croll v. Croll, on the other hand, is more problematic; her analysis of the issue at hand isn't implausible, but I'm bothered by her thinly-veiled contempt for the majority's straightforward textual analysis of the relevant treaty (governing child custody cases that cross international borders) and her willingness to pick the precedents in foreign caselaw that suit her and dismiss those that don't.

Comments

Pingback| 5.7.09 @ 6:40AM

More on Sonia Sotomayor | But As For Me links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

More on Sonia Sotomayor | But As For Me TWITTER • FACEBOOK But As For

tonypal| 5.7.09 @ 10:06AM

Perhaps an investigation into Mr. Kar's intellect is called for.

Karen| 5.7.09 @ 1:09PM

Mr. Tabin, do you even have a law degree? Have you ever been a judge? It's amazing to me how you feel entitled to call one of Sotomayor's rulings "problematic" when you don't even have the education or experience to analyze it properly.

White male entitlement is too much...

Loren Christian| 5.11.09 @ 3:51PM

Let us be clear here; whatever Sonia Sotomayor's qualifications, she needs to clear up a controversy about herself. The question is why did Sonia Sotomayor not look into allegations of misconduct against Rosemary Pooler, whom she supervised prior to Pooler becoming a Second Circuit judge?

Xanthippas| 5.14.09 @ 9:26AM

You might find his more recent writing on Sotomayor more interesting.

http://prawfsblawg.blogs.com/prawfsblawg/2009/05/after-15-years-of-excellence-sonia-sotomayor-suddenly-became-a-dumb-bullybut-only-just-before-the-la.html

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