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President Sotomayor?

By Jack M. Balkin

Imagine that Republicans really do have a death wish and that they do indeed decide to (successfully) filibuster her nomination. (I suspect that there are some who do have the requisite death wish, but that success is hard to envision.) What next? Well, she could take a page from Jeff Sessions's book: Judge Sotomayor could resign from the Second Circuit and challenge Kirstin Gillibrand's for the Democratic nomination for the Senate. Given Sen. Gillibrand's vulnerabilities among liberal Democrats, I would think that Sotomayor would win in a walk and then keep the seat for the Democrats in the fall of 2010. Then she would have six years to establish herself as the plausible successor to President Obama in 2016, at which time the Hispanic vote will be of even greater import in presidential politics than it is now. Unlikely, to be sure, but stranger things have happened in American politics. (Her first act as President, of course, would be appointing former-President Obama to the Supreme Court, preferably as Chief Justice.)

Full post as published by Balkinization on June 02, 2009 (boomark / email).