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Ethics

: Dispatches from the Culture Wars

Sotomayor's Record on Government Authority

By Ed Brayton

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Gene Healy, a Cato Institute scholar who specializes in executive power, has done a thorough review of Judge Sotomayor's record on favoring the government over the individual and has good news and bad news. First, the bad news:

When it comes to checking government power, Sotomayor's record is pretty poor. Civil libertarians can't be happy with her pro-police orientation: The former prosecutor has backed law enforcement in more than two-thirds of criminal cases that she's heard.
Her record on property rights is no more promising: In 2006's Didden v. Village of Port Chester, she ratified an eminent domain abuse that makes the infamous Kelo case look mild.

The landowner in Didden, who wanted to build a CVS, refused to pay off a politically connected developer, so the town gave his property to the developer to build a Walgreen's. Sotomayor's panel saw no evil in this case of state-sponsored extortion.

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Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on June 12, 2009 (boomark / email).