Talk:Sonia Sotomayor

This page has been mentioned by media organizations. The mentions are in: Catholic? I thought Sotomayor was a "lapsed" Catholic. Are non-practicing Catholics considered Catholic? Or would ex-Catholic or former Catholic be more appropriate? Untitled Marty Kaplan (26 May 2009). "Sonia's Wiki Wonder". Huffington Post.

Pending changes

This article is one of a number selected for the early stage of the trial of the Wikipedia:Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Queue are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.

The following request appears on that page:

Comments on the suitability of theis page for "Pending changes" would be appreciated.

Please update the Queue page as appropriate.

Note that I am not involved in this project any much more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 00:05, 17 June 2010 (UTC).

Edit war over degrees in infobox

Two editors have been edit warring over the inclusion or dis-inclusion of the degrees earned by Sotomayor from her two alma maters, as listed in the infobox. It would seem to be more constructive to work on other more pressing issues and articles in WP, especially when it would appear (without digging into it) to be more of a matter of stylistic preference than substantive import. I'm neutral. — Becksguy (talk) 07:12, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

This should be settled project-wide at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies) or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography, and not argued at each infobox. This is the third or fourth biographical article I've seen where this is being fought over. I'm neutral as well. Although in cases like this – lawyers – the degrees are pretty obvious: the first is going to be a bachelor's and the law school one is going to be a J.D. Wasted Time R (talk) 10:42, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, MOS would seem to be an appropriate places to settle this stylistically. What helps the reader get the most from an article should be our major consideration. And also consistency across articles of the same kind. But in this specific case, I don't see either as intrinsically right or wrong. One could, perhaps, say that having the degrees listed in the infobox saves a reader from looking for them elsewhere in the article. But at the cost of an edit war and having a reviewer approve pending changes? I think not. And yes, a law school usually grants JD degrees, so that one might be a no brainer. Eveyone is invited to weigh in at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (biographies)#Including degrees with Alma Maters in a bio listbox where I initiated a discussion on this. — Becksguy (talk) 21:21, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Concur with Becksguy for the most part but would hate to see a mandatory MOS ruling come down. If a judge or lawyer received law degrees from prestigious schools, it would be nice to see those at a glance. By the same token, suppose you had a lawyer who went to night school, recieved a degree from non-prestigious school but went on to become famous? That would catch my attention. ----moreno oso (talk) 21:26, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Nobody's arguing for removing the schools from the infobox. You can still see that Sotomayor went to Princeton and to Yale Law School, either way. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:44, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree. No need to list degrees in the infobox, and this is not the case with other Supreme Court Justices. bd2412 T 00:54, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

It WAS the case with other justices until the degrees were removed recently by an editor.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:58, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Miguel Estrada

The following line is generating some controversy: "Some of the fervor with which conservatives viewed the Sotomayor nomination was due to the history and grievances of federal judicial nomination battles going back to the 1987 Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination, especially Miguel Estrada, a Hispanic judicial nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, who was filibustered by Democratic senators during the Bush administration."

In cleaning up an old wording of the line, I removed the word Hispanic because it was irrelevant to the filibuster issue. The reason Democrats filibustered Estrada was not because of his ethnicity but because he was conservative. Drrll put Hispanic back in and the explanation was "relevant to filibuster." Fat&Happy reverted Drrll's change, and the explanation was "relevance of ethnicity not demonstrated." Drrll put Hispanic back in, this time saying: "NYT ref: 'One whose nomination was blocked was Miguel Estrada…nominated… to …appeals court…which would have put him in position to become the first Hispanic justice'". Drrll is correct about the NYT quote, but that doesn't mean the word belongs here. The Times can say all sorts of things that may be interesting but aren't necessarily relevant to the article's assertion. Labeling Estrada Hispanic without explanation as to why it is relevant to the filibuster issue is misleading. I don't know how Fat&Happy feels about this now, but I believe the label should be removed. Comments?--Bbb23 (talk) 23:52, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Drrll - the fact is he would have been the first Hispanic SCOTUS Justice. And, seeing how it appears in the article as verified by you, it can and should be included. ----moreno oso (talk) 00:01, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

The quoted comment from NYT was an after-the-fact throwaway line. It was in an article about confirmation hearings for Sotomayor, and may have been simply making the point that, absent the filibuster, he, not she, may well have been the first Hispanic member of SCOTUS. If we had proof of that meaning, it would be appropriate for inclusion in his biography, and possibly even in hers. We don't. It could also have been intended to assert his ethnicity contributed to the boycott, but we have no clear indication of that either. I see no reason to include the ethnic description, but if it is to be included, it needs some explanatory context. Possibly something along the lines of:

...especially Miguel Estrada, whose nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, was filibustered by Democrats during the Bush administration, and who would have been well-positioned to become the first Hispanic Justice of the Supreme Court if his appointment had succeeded.

would be an acceptable compromise, though I still consider it unnecessarily long. Fat&Happy (talk) 00:28, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

I not only agree that the compromise suggested by Fat&Happy is "unnecessarily long", I also think it just doesn't belong in this article, which is about Sotomayor, not about Estrada. I get the irony in what the NYT was saying, but it still has nothing to do with the context of the WP article. I also think it's too speculative to say that Estrada would have been well-positioned to become the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:46, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

The last name of Estrada is already a good indicator as to ethnicity. It's not similar to say, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice, whose ethnic background isn't readily apparent by their last names. I would still tend to agree that Hispanic belongs for both Estrada and Sotomayer. This is why Estrada is even mentioned in article, no? I dropped the soap (✐) 00:33, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

above troll has been indef'd. Jack Merridew 07:32, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Whether to mention Estrada in the article was discussed at length a year ago – see Talk:Sonia_Sotomayor/Archive 2#Mention Estrada? – with the result that he wasn't. Estrada wasn't a factor in Sotomayor's appeals court nomination slow-walk (since the Estrada episode hadn't happened yet) and he wasn't much of a factor in the Republican animus against her Supreme Court nomination ("wise Latina" took care of that nicely). So I really don't see what's changed between last year and now. I'd also be strongly against adding words like "who would have been well-positioned to become the first Hispanic Justice of the Supreme Court" ... that's a lot of if's and a variant of WP:NOTCRYSTAL. Plenty of people have been seen as on the track for a Supreme Court nomination that never happened. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:48, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Based upon Wasted Time R's post, I'd recommend non-inclusion. ----moreno oso (talk) 00:54, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Non-inclusion of what exactly, the Estrada sentence in its entirety, the part that starts with the word "especially", or something else? Personally, I'd be content with removing the entire sentence as I don't think what happened to Estrada is that notable in the Sotomayor article. Might have been different had Republicans filibustered Sotomayor.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:59, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Oh, OK. I thought the discussion was only about the inclusion of "Hispanic". On the broader question, I agree Estrada isn't a big enough issue to be included in this article, especially since no filibuster of Sotomayor materialized. Fat&Happy (talk) 01:33, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Do we have any consensus on what to do? Barring some objection, I'm in favor of removing the entire comment, specifically "Some of the fervor with which conservatives viewed the Sotomayor nomination was due to the history and grievances of federal judicial nomination battles going back to the 1987 Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination, especially Miguel Estrada, a Hispanic judicial nominee to the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, who was filibustered by Democratic senators during the Bush administration."--Bbb23 (talk) 23:56, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm in favor of keeping "Some of the fervor with which conservatives viewed the Sotomayor nomination was due to the history and grievances of federal judicial nomination battles going back to the 1987 Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination", which has been in the article all along and seems obviously true, and removing the rest. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:08, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

At least, that restricts it to Supreme Court nominees. I would still reword the sentence to be more in keeping with the source: "Some of the fervor with which conservatives viewed the Sotomayor nomination was fueled by the past mistreatment of conservative nominees, including Robert H. Bork (not confirmed in 1987) and Clarence Thomas (narrowly confirmed four years later)."--Bbb23 (talk) 00:22, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I agree with your wording change to include Clarence Thomas, as it reflects both what the source says and what much of the discussion was at the time by conservatives. For the same reasons, plus the fact that it was especially sensitive to conservatives at the time that Sotomayor--rather than Estrada--would become the first Hispanic justice, I think the Estrada bit should stay in. Drrll (talk) 00:32, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I would prefer "treatment" rather than the somewhat POV "mistreatment"; other than that, I concur with Bbb23's proposed wording, adding Thomas and omitting Estrada. Fat&Happy (talk) 00:41, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Aaah, treatment - so much simpler, and I was anguishing over putting mistreatment in quotes or saying stupid, legalistic things like alleged mistreatment. I still want to wait to see if anyone else agrees with Drrll.--Bbb23 (talk) 00:48, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, but it's what Republicans and conservatives thought of as the treatment. Many libs and Dems think Bork was treated just right, and think Thomas got an undeserved benefit of the doubt. Also, it's not just about SCOTUS noms – there hasn't been a really contentious one since Thomas. As the source makes clear, it's also about appeals court nominations, first the slowwalk of the second term Clinton noms, then the filibustering of the Bush noms. That's what led to talk of the nuclear option, not anything related to the Supreme Court. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:56, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm lost. Do you want to leave the Estrada part in then because I thought you said you didn't? Perhaps you just object to the rewording, but even if we don't add what I suggested, the original wording is awkward. "History and grievances of federal judicial nomination battles" makes no sense. It may be the history of the battles but it's not the grievances of the battles. The preposition of doesn't work with grievances. The source used the word grievance but its usage made sense: "Those emotions, say people who have followed the confirmation wars, are often fueled by the sense of grievance among conservatives and Republicans who say their judicial nominees have been treated unfairly and, sometimes, disrespectfully." So, if you want to hew as closely to the old sentence as possible but correct the structural error, how about just taking out the two words "and grievances" so it just says "history of federal judicial nomination battles," etc.? That also addresses your apparent concern that this is not limited to S. Ct. noominee battles.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:09, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

No, I don't want to leave Estrada in, but I do want to say federal judicial nomination battles not Supreme Court battles. (Why did Ginsberg and Breyer get near-unanimous votes but Sotomayor and Kagan aren't? It has to do with the appeals court battles that happened in between.) Just saying "history of ... battles" doesn't do it justice, because the Republicans and conservatives are really, really torqued by this issue. The language has got to get that across. Wasted Time R (talk) 01:35, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

My last suggestion for the day (after this, I'm turning off my computer): "Some of the fervor with which conservatives viewed the Sotomayor nomination was due to 'the sense of grievance among conservatives and Republicans" over the history of federal judicial nomination battles going back to the 1987 Robert Bork Supreme Court nomination." If that's not satisfactory, please suggest something else, but not the original sentence with the syntactical error.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:41, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

That's fine with me, but it doesn't need any quote marks within it. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:12, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

The phrase is a direct quote from the source article. The phrase seems long enough to merit quotation marks. Is there a WP policy on the issue?--Bbb23 (talk) 23:43, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Okay, I've replaced the current content with the phrase agreed to by Wasted Time. I left in the quotation marks because I felt uncomfortable not using them. Wasted Time can remove them if he believes it's in accordance with WP policy.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:12, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

You can't directly copy language, but the kind of unattributed quotation you did is not a good idea either (without checking the link in the footnote, the reader has no idea who said the quote). I've paraphrased it instead. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:46, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

I understand your point, although it doesn't bother me to have to look at the link. Your paraphrase is fine, although I very slightly changed one phrasing. My removal of the more specific link was inadvertent (cutting, pasting, and screwing up). Thanks for fixing it.--Bbb23 (talk) 01:06, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Disposition of five opinions Sotomayor joined in or wrote, on which the Supreme Court has ruled.

Case 04-1371 MERRILL LYNCH, PIERCE, FENNER & SMITH, INC., PETITIONER v. SHADI DABIT decided March 21, 2006 overruled 8-0 (Justice Alito did not participate) http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/05pdf/04-1371.pdf

Supreme Court Case 06-766 NY Board of Elections v. Lopez Torres decided 1/16/2008 Overruling the Federal Second Circuit Court 9-0 http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/07pdf/06-766.pdf

Two Cases combined, written opinion by Sotomayor overruled in both. Decided June 29, 2009 Case 07–1428 FRANK RICCI, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. JOHN DESTEFANO ET AL. and 08–328 FRANK RICCI, ET AL., PETITIONERS v. JOHN DESTEFANO ET AL. Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote the opinion and was reversed on this firefighter case 5-4. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-1428.pdf

Case # 00-201 decided June 25, 2001 NEW YORK TIMES CO., INC., et al. v. TASINI et al. Sotomayor’s court overruled 7-2. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/boundvolumes/533bv.pdf

Three Cases Combined (the Sotomayor court’s opinion overruled in 03-1274) 03-1116 GRANHOLM, GOV. OF MI, ET AL. V. HEALD, ELEANOR, ET AL. 03-1120 MI BEER & WINE WHOLESALERS V. HEALD, ELEANOR, ET AL. 03-1274 SWEDENBURG, JUANITA, ET AL. V. KELLY, EDWARD D., ET AL. Overruled by vote of 5-4 http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/04pdf/03-1116.pdf

In just 5 cases the total vote against Sotomayor’s opinions was 34 to 10 by the Supreme Court Justices. In her 5 cases the average vote to overrule her and her courts opinions was 6.8 to 2 ! Over 77% of the Supreme Court Justice’s votes were to OVERRULE opinions Sotomayor joined in or wrote!

[Author's remark to omit when inserted: This will balance the very slanted, deceptive and false view current presented by the article as it now stands. The current claim only 2 or 5 overruled is 100% false. I can find no final Supreme Court opinions that upheld the findings of Sotomayor and her court. All I see is where the Supreme Court declined to accept her and her courts cases.] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.230.97.65 (talk) 09:40, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

The article text says "Over her ten years on the Second Circuit, Sotomayor heard appeals in more than 3,000 cases and wrote about 380 opinions where she was in the majority.[11] The Supreme Court reviewed five of those, reversing three and affirming two[11]—not high numbers for an appellate judge of that many years[16] and a typical percentage of reversals.[103]" So the statement is only about cases where she is known to have written the majority opinion, not those where she simply joined the majority or where the opinion was unsigned. Given this, the three reversals are (see this FactCheck.org piece for another source on this):

1. in 2001, a 5-4 decision in Correctional Services Corporation v. Malesko

[Found in United State Reports 534 OCT. TERM 2001 covering Oct2001 to Sept2002 It is Case No. 00–860. Argued October 1, 2001—Decided November 27, 2001 See http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/boundvolumes/534bv.pdf News sources should never be used unless verified in the actual Court decision.Please get professional and read the decision to verify it. I do not have time to do your work. Ignoring a case where she is the one and only judge, wrote the opinion/ruling the Supreme Court overruled is covering up the quality or lack of quality in Judge Sotomayor's judicial work. Now, try understanding legal reality, if you join an opinion and do not write an alternate opinion which points out the errors or problems, & your alternate conclusions, then the opinion & its conclusion are also yours, not just the writers. When it is overruled your judicial judgment has been overruled and found wanting.24.230.53.197 (talk) 15:37, 26 October 2010 (UTC)]

2. in 2005, an 8-0 decision in Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. v. Dabit

3. in early 2009, a 6-3 decision in Entergy v. Riverkeeper

[Hunt for this case and the rest at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/opinions.aspx Verify that what happened is accurately reported, often it is not.24.230.53.197 (talk) 15:37, 26 October 2010 (UTC)]

While the two upholdings are (see this CNN story):

1. from 2005, upheld 5-4 in Empire Healthchoice Assurance, Inc. vs. McVeigh
2. from 2006, upheld in Knight vs. Commissioner (but reasoning unanimously deemed faulty)

These figures are from the time of her Supreme Court nomination, and don't include Ricci v. DeStefano, which came later. But it's not known who wrote the (brief) Second Appeals Court decision in Ricci, so I don't think it would have been counted in this analysis anyway. They also don't count the reversal in Tasini vs. New York Times, which was her decision as a district court judge, not appeals court.

The overall context is that the Supreme Court doesn't review a case at all unless it's likely to reverse it (it generally takes four votes to review, five to reverse, so there isn't a big jump). Per this source, the court reverses about 75 percent of the cases it reviews. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:28, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

In that case, to get an accurate sense of Sotomayor's appellate jurisprudence, we would have to see the number of opinions written by her for which cert was denied. bd2412 T 00:32, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

That would be an interesting number, but I don't remember running across a story that gives it. However it still wouldn't be the full picture. An appellate judge who writes solid opinions won't have many cases appealed to the Supreme Court in the first place. And there are probably other variables at play too, such as the mix of cases each appellate court tends to get and the era that a judge is on the bench during. So comparing 'reversal stats' across judges is a non-trivial exercise. -Wasted Time R (talk) 01:02, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Apologies.

My previous insertion of material here was not factual. The source I took it from got it, in turn, from a hoax. It now seems that Sonia Sotomayor did not suggest the castration of white men. Apologies to Sotomayor, to the National Organization for Women, and to Wikipedia. The original source of the misinformation was a hoax.

Jenab6 (talk) 20:46, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

La Raza mebership

There is not a single mention about it in the article.--Lootsucker (talk) 01:31, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

This was discussed back in 2009, see Talk:Sonia Sotomayor/Archive 2#National Council of La Raza. The consensus was that since her membership solely consisted of her paying the $35 annual dues, and that she didn't attend conferences or participate in the leadership or do anything like that, it did not merit mentioning. There could be a dozen organizations that she belonged to at that level, just like you and I do. Given that Sotomayor was in high positions in several other organizations, the article should focus on those. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:27, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

FYI, Lootsucker was indef'd as a sock. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:44, 24 March 2011 (UTC)