Supreme Choice

This morning's news is ablaze with reports (unconfirmed at this time) that President Obama has picked Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice Souter on the Supremem Court. Earlier reports were that Obama was looking for someone with "empathy" to serve on the Court, although I am not sure what that quality really has to do with adjudicating constitutionality. It was joked that what Obama really needed in a Supreme candidate would be a half-black, half-Hispanic, trans-sexual lesbian single mother on welfare; maybe he did not get that, but he did hit two of his "key demographics" by putting forward a female Hispanic.

In all seriousness, there is only one question that needs to be asked here: is she the most qualified candidate for this job? Of course, that begs the question: what does "most qualified" mean? What I mean by that is this: is this person one of the best constitutional scholars in the country at this time? Does she have a track record of upholding the constitution throughout her career to date? Or has she attempted (successfully or not) to legislate from the bench?

According to at least one source, she is not qualified for this job:

"Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written," said Wendy Long, counsel to the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network. "She thinks that judges should dictate policy and that one's sex, race and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench. ... She has an extremely high rate of her decisions being reversed, indicating that she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court."

As always, it is best to seek the evidence to back up these claims and hopefully the Republicans in the Senate will do their job and expose that evidence to the country when the time for her confirmation hearings comes.

UPDATE: Apparently she's incompetent enough in her judicial capabilities, that liberal rag, The New Republic could not even recommend her for the job. Could Obama have just nominated his own version of Harriet Miers?