President Obama has nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the next Supreme Court Justice, and the resulting explosion of political, professional and personal scrutiny has ensued…business as usual. However, since Sotomayor’s legal and judicial experience spans over three decades and the fact that she has previously survived a George H. W. Bush nomination along with a year-long senate confirmation process, it will be decidedly hard on most fronts to oppose her nomination. Unfortunately, where there’s a will there’s a way, and opponents of Sotomayor’s nomination have found a way to attack her with deep philosophical punditry as she has now become the point of interest regarding the actual responsibility of a jurist (judge) in itself.
Does the American judicial system have the right to influence and even invent public policy? Should federal judges have rulings that are intentionally drawn from political ideology and social circumstance instead of allowing court rulings to be a sole product of fact-based interpretation of law?
This is now the lead question in the debate over Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court. This topic was essentially influenced by Judge Sotomayor, as a question from a 2005 panel discussion at Duke University Law School in Durham, N.C. led her to respond, “All of the legal defense funds out there, they’re looking for people with court-of-appeals experience, because it is court of appeals where policy is made.”
Sotomayor followed up with admitting that this was a dangerous statement to make, as in our current society, laws are intended to be constructed within the legislative branch of government. Critics have begun to use this as proof of the possibility Sonia Sotomayor will perform as an “activist judge,” in other words, someone who will use judicial power to shape the law in accordance with her own personal ideology. Sotomayor insists that this is far from her intentions.
President Obama has recently spoken of his requirements that must be met in order to appoint a justice to the Supreme Court during the announcement of the nomination. He spoke highly of judicial restraint, citing that Supreme Court justices must have “an understanding that a judge’s job is to interpret, not make law – to approach decisions without any particular ideology or agenda – but rather a commitment to impartial justice, a respect for precedent, and a determination to fully apply the law to the facts at hand.