Expect Few Fireworks For Sotomayor's Confirmation

I didn't expect there to be much in the way of fireworks since Judge Sonia Sotomayor's record is pretty lengthy and there aren't any glaring reasons to find her unacceptable for confirmation to the US Supreme Court. Apparently, the Senate GOP agrees.

While there's a cottage industry set up by support and opposition groups to every judicial nominee and some cute statistics have been thrown out for general consumption, the record is what it is.

Claiming that 60% of her authored opinions were reversed by the Supreme Court is misleading. There are two ways to read that - the Supreme Court overruled 60% (3 of 5) of those cases brought before with Sotomayor being the author of the opinion, or that less than 1% of her cases were overturned (3 out of 380 opinions) (which is how Obama will spin it).

The truth is actually somewhere in the middle since there were several written opinions at the District Court level that went on to be overturned and upheld by the US Supreme Court (Tasani comes to mind).

Even if you consider that 3 of 5 cases were overturned, that actually is the norm given the Court's overall reversal rates. More often than not, the Supreme Court overrules cases brought up on appeal, and the reason that these cases are heard is that the justices believe that there's a possibility for reversal on appeal when they decide to hear the case based on the rule of four.

The 60% figure is a easily bandied about statistic that opponents use to make a far more complicated point stick, just as those claiming that less than 1% of her cases were reversed claim that she's in line with the Court's reasoning. Soundbites may make for great television shouting points, but they do little to inform the public about Sotomayor's legal reasoning and why she authored opinions as she did.

There are the real questions that have to be asked at confirmation. We don't know how she's going to on multiple areas of law, including on abortion, death penalty, and gay marriage (the current hot button topics), but we might get an idea based on questions about her judicial philosophy. We know that she's going to be a liberal justice; the question is just how liberal and there are signs pointing in both directions on that - some of her authored opinions are in line with the conservative members of the Court.

UPDATE:
Jules Crittenden considers the possibility that Sotomayor's judicial philosophy turns her into Souter with a salsa beat. It's an intriguing possibility, and it surely would drive the left nuts. I don't see much chance of that happening, but there are unknowables about how any nominee would respond to the issues presented. The best any President can do when nominating a jurist for the Supreme Court is that their philosophy remains consistent with their previous record. It isn't always the case.

UPDATE:
John at Powerline makes a similar case about the 60% reversal statistic.