Judge Sotomayor: Not a radical

Conservative interest groups have predictably launched their familiar litany of codephrases on Judge Sotomayor. Within moments of the announcement of her nomination, all the old rhetoric immediately came out: she’s a “liberal judicial activist,” declared Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network, whose “personal political agenda is more important tha[n] the law as written.” But in fact, a look at her rulings on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals reveals nothing of the sort.

What a study of her rulings on the appeals court reveals is a judge who carefully attempts to follow precedent even if it conflicts with her own views or political alliances. For example, in Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush, a 2002 case challenging the “Mexico City Policy” that forbid the use of foreign aid funding by any organization that promoted abortion, Sotomayor upheld the constitutionality of that rule despite being pro-choice herself.

In Amnesty America v. Town of West Hartford, Judge Sotomayor overturned a lower court ruling that had gone against a group of anti-abortion protesters who had alleged violations of their civil rights, ruling that the protesters had to be allowed their day in court to challenge that they considered to be the use of excessive force by the police.

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