Legalities

I think Wood is too independent. Obama will want a more reliably liberal vote such as Sotomayor or Sullivan.

Give the Sotomayor-paranoia a rest. From the Court's perspective, collegiality is surely a factor. And by some accounts Sotomayor is personally abrasive (Scalia, by contrast, is professionally abrasive, but that's different). POTUS has no obligation to consider whether a nominee's personality jives with the rest of the Court's, but it would be nice. It appears that both Kagan and Wood are more personable candidates, and therefore potentially less jarring on the Court. I frankly can see Sotomayor reacting badly and acrimoniously to a Scalia-style beating that the other justices would merely shrug off. I watched a GW moot court sometime back with Roberts and Sotomayor on the panel - she was volatile, voluble, and overbearing (all qualities mitigated by a sense of humor, of which she has none). Roberts looked slightly bemused throughout, probably relieved that she wasn't on his Court. :) Note: I'm not saying that a sense of humor is a requisite. But it would have made any abrasiveness tolerable - for humorless abrasiveness is often of the most grating kind. Tough on Sotomayor. Like Thomas, I think she has the kind of hardscrabble background the Court should see more of. Her temperament however is a big minus, notwithstanding the contrarian opinions of hacks like Glenn Greenwald.

Re: "And by some accounts Sotomayor is personally abrasive (Scalia, by contrast, is professionally abrasive, but that's different)."

What a load of sexist bunk. Men can behave however they want and it's always professional. Everybody must adjust to them.

And you don't know anything about Sotomayor's personality. It's amazing how seriously some people are taking a hit piece published without any sources in a magazine (TNR) with a history of plagiarism.

Re: "I watched a GW moot court sometime back with Roberts and Sotomayor on the panel - she was volatile, voluble, and overbearing (all qualities mitigated by a sense of humor, of which she has none)."

I saw that on C-Span too. She was none of those things.

Right, any criticism of Sotomayor for being humorlessly abrasive is "sexist." It's amusing how quick the intellectually vacuous are to pull the sexist card. All I meant was that Scalia is professionally scathing in his opinions: but he is "charming" on a personal level, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg has described him. Is she sexist too? By contrast, Sotomayor is opposite: abrasive on a personal level, but not professionally in her work product, i.e., her opinions. I've seen enough of Sotomayor at oral argument to form an opinion of her "personality." Since you don't know anything about what I know about Sotomayor's personality, it is really you, Karen, who is spewing a load of bunk.

If she was abrasive, she wouldn't be good for collegiality on the Court, as I've explained previously. As someone who prefers conservative-ish judges, I have no dog in this fight. Ideologically speaking, Wood, Kagan and Sotomayor are cards from the same deck. It may even be the case that Wood and Kagan are more liberal than Sotomayor. Even so, I'd rather have the brightest, most temperamentally well-adjusted justice on the bench who is more liberal than her less liberal counterpart who is none of those things. If only for the institutional health of the Court. Deal with it.

You still didn't answer my question. What difference does it make if she's abrasive? Are you telling me that no man in the history of the USSC has ever been abrasive? Since when did non-abrasiveness become a requirement for the USSC? Do they teach this law school?

I served on jury duty and the judge was abrasive. Maybe he should be fired. lol

If this is the best that the right wing can come up with--anonymous hit piece from a discredited journal with a hisotry of plagiarism calling her dumb and abrasive--then she's going to be on the Court.

That is, if Obama doesn't cave. That's a whole different story.

Karen, I "answered" your question even before you posed it - in my very first comment I explained how collegiality is a desirable attribute from the Court's perspective. A less collegial Court means more fractious opinions, less unanimity and therefore qualitatively less coherence in the law and the opinions that issue from the nation's highest Court. In short, an unhappy Court is unpleasant for all involved, and ultimately detrimental to the institutional health of the Court and the state of the law. Quality matters. And the Court is like any other workplace where work-product could suffer if the working environment is a poor one. Hence the importance, from the Court's perspective, of collegiality.

The "right-wing" doesn't really have a dog in this fight, since the other nominees are as liberal, if not more liberal. So that's just your paranoia showing. It has everything to do with judicial temperament and personality. I guess that's the difference between conservatives and liberals - conservatives want what's best for the Court even if they disagree with the politics of all its prospective nominees; whereas liberals just want the feel-good story, or else the judicial tyrant to better impose her politics on the Court.

And of course there have been instances of abrasive or less than savory personalities on the Court. Burger comes to mind. And the Court suffered for it. As for your jury duty, it suffices to say that your particular judge won't be nominated for SCOTUS anytime soon, so your anecdote merely proves my point.

And btw, Rosen teaches at GW, and likely saw the same moot court I did. I wouldn't at all be surprised if that was another contributory data point to his sense of Sotomayor.

Sorry, but the "collegiality" argument is unconvincing. They can't attack the quality of her work, so they have to invent some BS that she doesn't know how to behave.

(Another blog said that she was too fat. lol)

What I think some are really afraid that Sotomayor won't DEFER to the other Justices. They don't mind minorities as long as the minorities do not take a stand on anything and do whatever they are told.

And you say the right-wing doesn't
have a dog in this fight? They will oppose just about anybody Obama chooses, but their history shows us that they are more likely to oppose
minority nominees.

The media campaign against Sotomayor
is unbelievable and she hasn't even been nominated.

Except your unsupported personal opinion that it is "unconvincing" is even less convincing. You clearly know very little about how the Supreme Court works and even less of its internal dynamics. Each justice has an independent vote on his or her own view of a case. They do not "defer" to anyone. And there's no evidence to suggest that the other nominees - intellectually buoyant personalities themselves - would "defer" to anyone were they on the bench. So your characteristically conspiratorial and paranoid 'deference' theory is so much bunk.

And I find it hilariously ironic that liberals talk about being fixated on opposing minority candidates given their own inglorious and often vicious opposition to Clarence Thomas, variously tarred as a race traitor or an Uncle Tom or worse for daring to disagree with pious liberal orthodoxies - in short, for disagreeing with you. And if they do disagree with you, they're really being "told what to do," as if a minority cannot also be an independent minded conservative. This is the rankest, vilest - indeed racist - supposition that underlies your glib remarks on minority nominees.

As a minority myself, I find this offensive.

I didn't say that a minority could not be an independent minded conservative. I said that those aren't the kind conservatives prefer on the Court or in other high positions.

Clarence Thomas's record speaks for itself. He was not really qualifed and in his confirmation hearings, I remember him not even knowing what the Lemon Test was. I stand by what I said, and it is not a put down of minorities. We have a racist culture that believes power should be in the hands of white men even if they are incompetent like Dubya.

And Democrats have done the same thing. They wouldn't even schedule a hearing for Miguel Estrada who was a highly qualified conservative. But the Democrats had no trouble confirming a white conservative.

96% of Supreme Court Justices have been white men. None have been Hispanic. So give me a break with your claims that if she were a white man nobody would have heard of her.

Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and is a graduate of Yale Law school. She has been a judge since 1991.

We just had eight years of the most incompetemt white man in history who only went to Yale and Harvard because of his family ties. He shamed our nation with his stupidity and left our economy a mess.

And you wonder why we are now looking elsewhere for leadership.

Jan, I've argued and seen many arguments in front of Judge Wood. She's an intelligent woman, no doubt, but she's also often an overbearing, self-indulgent and bullying questioner. She will belittle parties that she disagrees with, will occasionally ignore the standards of review, and rarely shows the ability to reevaluate her position in light of new facts or precedent. During a recent argument that a friend had in front of her, she asked a three minute-long question that contained five separate questions. The parties had ten minutes a side.

Certainly, on a circuit with Easterbrook and Posner, Wood is not the only judge with who loves to hear herself talk. But as someone who's practiced in front of her, seen a lot of her work, and is an Obama supporter, I would be greatly disappointed if she were nominated.

I think younger candidates who are either brighter, more personable and better legal scholars (like Kagan or Karlan) or have far wider and less typical range of experience (like Leah Ward Sears-- also a mother of two-- or Governor Granholm) would be better bets. Sotomayor has a fabulous life story, but she may suffer from the same temperamental issues and her health is a serious concern, especially with Alito and Roberts being appointed at such young ages.

To clarify, I also think Sullivan could be an excellent candidate, but her professional experience is a bit limited given what Obama is looking for, and the fact that she failed the California bar exam (while serving as a great warning to recent law grads) probably makes that a bit unlikely. I think she might be a better candidate for a Ninth Circuit vacancy.

What do you mean that her life experience is a bit limited? Why does life experience always come up when the potential nominee is a single woman? What kind of "life experience" did Souter have?

Well, I was talking about Judge Wood, and the point was that she has essentially been an academic her entire legal career (for nearly 30 years), besides a few short stints working for the Justice Department. That is basically the exact background of Justices Breyer and Scalia, and, honestly, I think their lack of exposure to the real legal world of representing clients, slogging through litigation, and trying cases shows itself in their opinions, which are often not very practical. I think the court would be better served with someone who has practiced extensively, or managed a large organization, or run for elected office, or worked as a trial judge. Kagan, Sullivan, and Karlan are all single women and Judge Wood is married, by the way, so your implied charge of singleton discrimination is a bit off base.

Souter was a prosecutor, a trial court judge, a state supreme court justice and a state attorney general, in addition to being a Rhodes scholar.

Good thought with this one. You are very independent. You are a model to everyone.

LLC

Judge Wood has been a judge on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals since 1995. She obviously has more than academic experience.

I think you are confusing her with Elena Kagan. Kagan is an academic who has never been a judge or even argued a case in front of a judge.

I'm not confusing Judge Wood with anyone, having, as my previous comment noted, argued in front of her. She's been an academic since 1980, and continues to teach at Chicago, even after being placed on the 7th Circuit. Sigh....

Judge Wood has many fine qualities, including that she has juggled family responsibilities and a demanding career. However, your post wrongly assumes that this is something that only women do. There is nothing gender-specific about making goodie bags. Perhaps having experienced the challenges of working while tackling significant family responsibilities is important for a judicial nominee, but it does not follow ineluctably from a person's gender.

To imply otherwise is sexist.