Who will Obama nominate to replace Souter?

This alone is enough to disqualify her in my opinion. She seems to have not read the US Constitution either.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor: Court is Where Policy is Made

[Platapus]

Originally Posted by CastleBravo

This alone is enough to disqualify her in my opinion. She seems to have not read the US Constitution either.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor: Court is Where Policy is Made

Sounded like she was just acknowledging the reality of the situation.

Any time there is a judicial interpretation of a law, there is policy set.

Anytime the court promulgates that a law is or is not constitutional, judicial policy is made.. Judicial policy, not legislative policy. When critics say that the courts should not legislate from the bench, they are correct, however seldom do courts do this. They do, however, set judicial policy from the bench... in fact, that is what they are supposed to do.

This is why the SCOTUS is populated with justices and not simply constitutional scholars.

If all the SCOTUS was supposed to do is read the constitution there would be no need for justices. The job could be better handled by constitutional scholars and historians.

The job of the SCOTUS is to interpret the constitution with regards to other laws, precedents, our changing cultures and probably a hundred other factors.

This is also one of the reasons the SCOTUS is able to set judicial precedent and the fact that their precedents carry much more weight than lower court precedents. A precedent is an interpretation. An official interpretation in fact.

There is much more to being a SCOTUS justice then just being able to read the constitution. It requires the ability to interpret the constitution. This is why there are multiple justices and decisions require a majority vote.... different justices have different interpretations.

And this is a good thing.