Friday, June 05, 2009

Sotomayor’s Revealing Joke About Supreme Court Justices Making Policy   [Ed Whelan]

In a May 2006 speech, Judge Sotomayor tells “a joke that [she thinks] aptly describes the difference between supreme court, circuit court, and district court judging”:

 

It involves three judges who go duck hunting.  A duck flies overhead and the supreme court justice, before he picks up his shotgun, ponders about the policy implications of shooting the duck—how will the environment be affected, how will the duck hunting business be affected if he doesn’t shoot the duck, well by the time he finishes, the duck got away.

Another duck flies overhead, and the circuit judge goes through his five part test before pulling the trigger—1) he lifts the shotgun to his shoulder, 3) [sic] he sights the duck, 3) he measures the velocity of the duck’s flight, 4) he aims, and 5) he shoots—and, he misses.

 

Finally, another duck flies by, the district judge picks up the shotgun and shoots.  The duck lands and the district judge picks it up, swings it over his shoulder and decides that he will let the other two judges explain what he did over dinner.

 

So Sotomayor thinks an unobjectionable and apt description of what is most distinctive about the role of Supreme Court justices in making decisions involves is “ponder[ing] about … policy implications.”  [Update:  Eugene Volokh offers a characteristically thoughtful critique of the original version of this post.  In response, I have tweaked my language in this paragraph; the italicized words are new.]

 

(The excerpt above is from the prepared text on pages 10-12 of the speech (emphasis added).  Sotomayor handwrote some trivial changes.)

06/05 10:46 AMShare