Legal News

It?s Not Quite ?Justice Sotomayor? Yet, But . . .

By Ashby Jones

. . . it might as well be. That’s the word from Tom Goldstein (pictured), the co-head of the Supreme Court practice at Akin Gump in Washington and founder of the indispensable Scotusblog. In a post titled “It’s Over,” Goldstein writes with a certainty that literally made us sit up in our chair:

Basically before it ever started, the fight over the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor is done. She is going to be confirmed by a relatively wide margin and without a substantial, mainstream assault on her credentials or suitability for the bench.

Continues Goldstein:

To be clear at the outset, this is a descriptive point, not a normative one. I'm explaining the political reality, not how the process should go forward. . . . The phase of defining a nominee in the public's eye now lasts around forty-eight hours. In that time Harriet Miers was pretty much done – finished. By this point, there has been a huge amount of press coverage and opponents have had the opportunity to make their case. It's a shockingly short period (unfortunately so), but it reflects (a) the ready availability of research materials, and (b) the rapid turn-over of news cycles.

For a nominee like Sonia Sotomayor, that is the life-or-death period. Once the public is comfortable with her suitability, then the irreducible political reality is that there is no serious prospect of vigorously challenging the nation's first Latina Supreme Court nominee when the President's party has an overwhelming numerical advantage in the Senate.

There you have it. Of course, Goldstein could be wrong — we’re sure he has been before. But among Gen Xers, Goldstein’s as serious a student of the Court as anyone out there — and we think he’ll probably prove himself right on this one.

For a lighter take on the Supreme Court, you’ve got to check out the Daily Beast’s photo gallery entitled “Sotomayor, The Movie.” It’s hilarious. The idea is simple: find the actor who would play each of the justices in “Sotomayor, The Movie” — still in pre-pre-pre production, from what we hear. Our favorite: David Hyde Pierce as Justice Alito. We’ve looked at that picture four times now, and are still laughing.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 28, 2009 (boomark / email).