As Ed notes, press accounts of yesterday's White House Sotomayor Pep Rally with law-enforcement groups quote Vice President Joe Biden as saying "Judge Sotomayor has your back" and "throughout this nominating process [sic], I know you'll have her back." [I think Biden means the "confirmation" process; the "nomination" process was over when the President nominated Judge Sotomayor.]
TO: JCN MEMBERS AND INTERESTED PARTIES
FROM: WENDY E. LONG, COUNSEL
DATE: JUNE 9, 2009
Today’s staged attempt by Vice President Biden and the Obama Administration to portray Judge Sonia Sotomayor as a “law-and-order” judge is an unprecedented political campaign by a White House for a Supreme Court nominee.
In the past, outside groups have held such events independent of the White House and were not controlled by the White House. Today’s event looks like a county sheriff election rally. The purpose of this sideshow is to avoid facts in Sotomayor’s actual record that indicate a soft-on-crime judge who twists the law, particularly law at the intersection of race and crime issues, and who avoids binding precedent as a lower court judge in ways that unnecessarily favor criminals and hinder law enforcement.
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510
June 5, 2009
Re: Judge Sonia Sotomayor's Incomplete Senate Questionnaire
Dear Senators:
A first read through Judge Sonia Sotomayor's U.S. Senate questionnaire for her Supreme Court nomination raises more questions than it answers. It is already clear that she has omitted controversial material from her past in which she asserts that "[c]apital punishment is associated with evident racism in our society" and advocates public opposition to restoring the death penalty in New York state.
Whatever the immediate cause of this glaring omission, the ultimate blame should be placed squarely at the feet of the White House and its attempt to rush the Senate into an unprepared confirmation hearing that overlooks critical materials. The White House has had a recurring problem in failing adequately to vet nominees. Yet the Obama Administration yesterday touted Sotomayor's questionnaire as having been returned to the Senate more quickly than those for the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.
"This is the biggest piece of fiction writing I have seen. It bears no resemblance to reality. I have a hard time believing anyone in the GOP would buy this fantasy. The President voted against his own talking points when he voted against Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito as a Senator. He tried to block this philosophy by filibuster. And now he is serving them up to the U.S. Senate? They, of course, do not remotely describe the Obama nominee. The White House obviously has made a mistake, passing out the leftover talking points that must have been in the West Wing about Cheif Justice Roberts and Justice Alito."
Dear Senator:
Over the next several weeks, Judge Sonia Sotomayor will be making her courtesy visits to you and your colleagues. At the same time, the Judiciary Committee will be entering into the phase of the confirmation process where her body of judicial decisions and written opinions begin to be evaluated. Based on what the White House has said, it is a voluminous appellate record--participation in over 3,000 panels and nearly 400 written opinions.
TO: JCN Members and Interested Parties
FROM: Wendy E. Long, JCN Counsel
DATE: May 29, 2009
In recent days, the White House has tried to explain away a number of public statements by Judge Sotomayor suggesting that her view of the role of the Court in our society is a fairly radical one, inconsistent with the “rule of law” as we understand it.
The “rule of law” is a principle of American justice, going back to the most ancient roots of Western law. It holds that the rules of a society are definite and knowable by its citizens, and that those rules are applied impartially by judges, who are servants of the law, but are not above it. In other words, the law, and not the judge, makes the rules. This is what Chief Justice John Roberts referred to in his confirmation proceedings when he described himself as a “servant of the law.”
STATEMENT BY WENDY LONG, COUNSEL TO JUDICIAL CONFIRMATION NETWORK
www.judicialnetwork.com
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' comments yesterday that "We can all move past YouTube snippets and half sentences and actually look at the honest-to-God record" raise an important question for Mr. Gibbs. The Duke University comments by Judge Sotomayor are quite clear and unequivocal. Is Mr. Gibbs suggesting that Judge Sotomayor was lying in the tape or that she really didn't mean it?
Statement by Wendy Long, Chief Counsel, Judicial Confirmation Network:
Comments yesterday by the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and today by Senator Chuck Schumer, that statements made at Duke University by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in which she said appellate courts should "make policy" were taken out of context are purposely misleading and outright misinformation designed to walk back an obvious vetting problem this White House has become known for. If Mr. Gibbs or Senator Schumer were to read other law review articles written by Judge Sotomayor, her own published word, it is clear and unequivocal that Judge Sotomayor has a long track record of advocating for using courts to make policy and laws. It is obvious that the reason the White House has churned up its spin machine on this is because countless polls consistently show that the American people to do not support judges making policy or law from the bench. The American people have spoken loudly and often on this subject, they want judges who interpret law as made through the people and their elected representatives, not through judges imposing their personal political views from the bench as Judge Sotomayor has consistently advocated.
New JCN Video here:
www.judicialnetwork.com
"Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written. She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one's sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.
TO: JCN Members and Interested Parties
FROM: Wendy Long, Counsel to Judicial Confirmation Network
DATE: May 26, 2009
