Legal News

Sotomayor, Day 28: She Says Goodbye to Belizean Grove, More

By Ashby Jones

We hoofed it up to Columbia Law School on Saturday afternoon to listen to a speech by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was back in Morningside Heights to celebrate her 50th reunion.

The Justice was eloquent and funny both during her half-hour speech (on Columbia Law and the Supreme Court) and the Q&A section, in which she discussed her love of opera, her grand respect for Justice Souter, and the “brouhaha” over the Supreme Court’s use of international law. (Stated Ginsburg, in her defense of citing opinions from foreign courts: “we’re doing so not because of . . . precedent, but because of the quality of the reasoning of the decision.”)

In any event, to our mild disappointment, Justice Ginsburg didn’t broach the topic of Sonia Sotomayor — we would have loved to have heard her thoughts on the confirmation process. So we’re having to look “abroad” for news on her this morning.

Goodbye Belizean Grove: Judge Sotomayor has resigned her membership at the Belizean Grove, the all-women’s group that bills itself as women's answer to the 130-year-old all-male Bohemian Club in California. In a letter to Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Judge Sotomayor said she was convinced that the club, the Belizean Grove, did not practice "invidious discrimination" and that her membership in it did not violate judicial ethics. But she said she did not want questions about it to "distract anyone from my qualifications and record." Click here for the brief AP story.

(Law Blog editorial note: In all the discussion of the Belizean Grove, we thought we’d see some member of the Bohemian Club write in her defense. After all, the fellas that head West every summer really do, we’re told, love their club. And many of them, Boldfaced Names such as many of them are, would have no trouble finding space for such a piece in a reputable pub. In any event, that piece might be out there, but we haven’t seen it.)

The Mentor, Jose Cabranes: The NYT reports today on the role Second Circuit judge Jose Cabranes has played throughout Sotomayor’s career. Reports the Times: Cabranes “has played a singular variety of roles - guide, role model, patron and foil.” Interestingly, Now, writes the Times, “differences with her mentor are at the center of the debate over her confirmation because of Judge Cabranes's blistering dissent” from a ruling by Judge Sotomayor and two others in the Ricci case concerning firefighters in New Haven, Ct.

The Written Sotomayor: Legal Times’s Tony Mauro helps explain what “some see as a weak spot in her résumé: those long, plodding opinions that review every moment in the case history and cite, explore and dispose of every point made in the briefs and arguments.” It comes, writes Mauro, not necessarily from an inability to craft soaring prose, but partly from her insistence on reading everything in a case’s record before writing an opinion or dissent: “all the motions in limine, the briefs on summary judgment, everything that came up from the district court.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 22, 2009 (boomark / email).