A paean to Judge Sotomayor from a redoubtable source,.BUT...

http://tinyurl.com/mcgjtf
The Judge Sotomayor I've Faced Her questioning is tough and fair, demanding and acute. By FLOYD ABRAMS ...I have been struck by the assertion by some lawyers that her questioning has been too harsh, even abrasive. True, Judge Sotomayor once described herself in a speech as a "bear on the bench." ...But in my experience her questions are tough and fair, demanding and acute. One could say worse things about a judge... ****Abrams goes on to give two trenchant examples of tough, insightful questioning by Judge S.*** ...Long before Judge Sotomayor was appointed a federal appellate judge, the single most honored and esteemed member of the U.S. Court of Appeals was Learned Hand. Routinely described as the single greatest American jurist never appointed to the Supreme Court, Hand could terrorize counsel who appeared before him....That's how a bear in a courtroom behaves.
****I don't think any opponent doubts Judge S.'s deep intelligence and successful performance on the Appellate bench. The only argument that could be made is perhaps one that might have kept Judge Hand from the Supreme Court: when someone is too smart AND opinionated, being one rung below the Supreme Court provides some constraint against such person's opinions running wild. (When Robert Bork was prevented from being seated, it was not because anyone doubted that he was one of the finest legal minds in the U.S.) Judge Sotomayor has a poor record of reversals by the Supreme Court. It is, perhaps, significant that, in the recent New Haven firefighter case, where her ruling was over-turned, she didn't even make more than a one-paragraph simplistic statement of WHY she and her colleagues ruled as they did. This, more than which way she came down, was the greater basis for criticism.In all likelihood, she ruled the way she WANTED the outcome to be rather than the way she thought she could honestly justify intellectually. THAT is the problem: at the SCOTUS level she can overturn established law and modify the Constitution and, being as smart as she probably is, could probably dragoon a few other justices along with her. If only she could be REQUIRED to write her detailed opinions in public fashion,unlike the New Haven case, it is likely that her contributions would be more positive than negative. It could substantially modify the Constitution as we know it but it should make for lively and insightful debate.****