Friday, June 05, 2009

Re: Sotomayor’s Public Cheerleading for Obama   [Ed Whelan]

Just a couple of follow-up comments to my post yesterday about Judge Sotomayor’s disturbingly partisan pro-Obama remarks in her April 17, 2009, speech:

 

1.  Both supporters and opponents of President Obama properly take note of the historic achievement that his election marks, and I would not see remarks along that line as partisan.  For that reason, I did not include among the remarks that I found objectionable Sotomayor’s reference to “a grand historical event like the Presidential election of a person of color.” (p. 10)  (One of the passages that I do find objectionable includes a reference to the election of “America’s first Afro-American President,” but it is other parts of that passage—e.g., the “wide coalition of groups that joined forces … was awe inspiring”—that render it partisan.)

 

2.  A hypothetical might enable supporters of Sotomayor to exercise dispassionate judgment on this matter.  Imagine that then-D.C. Circuit judge John Roberts, in the aftermath of President Bush’s re-election victory in 2004, had made public statements like these:

 

“The power of working together was, this past November, resoundingly proven.” 

 

“The wide coalition of groups that joined forces to re-elect President Bush was awe inspiring in both the passion the members of the coalition exhibited in their efforts and the discipline they showed in the execution of their goals.” 

 

“On Election Day, we saw past our ethnic, religious and gender differences.”

 

“What is our challenge today:  Our challenge as lawyers and court related professionals and staff, as citizens of the world is to keep the spirit of the common joy we shared on Election Day alive in our everyday existence.”

 

“It is the message of promoting democracy worldwide [or, if you prefer, of ‘promoting compassionate conservatism’] that President Bush is trying to trumpet and it is a clarion call we are obligated to heed.” 

 

Would anyone imagine that any sitting federal judge—much less someone who has since been nominated to the Supreme Court—could appropriately have made such comments?

 

Sotomayor’s remarks provide further evidence that she doesn’t practice the judicial obligation of impartiality.

 

[Cross-posted on The Corner]

06/05 10:03 AMShare