As I was drafting my post yesterday on Sotomayor's opinions, Kent Scheidegger over at Crime and Consequences also put together a (slightly more in depth) legal analysis of Sotomayor's opinions dealing with the AEDPA (see FAQ 2). It is well worth a read for habeas followers.
He makes a real interesting point that I wish I had made yesterday. He says that a judge's decisions on the AEDPA are insightful because:
"The law is bitterly resented by many federal judges precisely because it was enacted to curtail their ability to lord it over state courts and because it rejected the notion that their judgments are inherently superior. Many, many federal judges have attempted to evade it, and a few have gone so far as to declare it unconstitutional. All of the latter have been reversed. Reversing the evasions has been a major part of the Supreme Court's workload, although, as one judge boasted, they can't reverse them all."
His analysis points out that Sotomayor has been very willing to apply the AEDPA and she did not show the hostility to the statute that other federal judges demonstrated (including ironically enough Justice Souter, see my previous post on Souter).
Once again, it tends to show that Sotomayor is far from a liberal activist judge. As I stated yesterday, she is a judicial technocrat -- she impartially follows the laws as written. Precisely what a judge is supposed to do.
In this vein, Scheidegger concludes:
"On the whole, these are well-considered, well-written opinions that apply the language of the statute and the precedents of higher courts, easily within the limits in which reasonable people may differ."
He makes a real interesting point that I wish I had made yesterday. He says that a judge's decisions on the AEDPA are insightful because:
"The law is bitterly resented by many federal judges precisely because it was enacted to curtail their ability to lord it over state courts and because it rejected the notion that their judgments are inherently superior. Many, many federal judges have attempted to evade it, and a few have gone so far as to declare it unconstitutional. All of the latter have been reversed. Reversing the evasions has been a major part of the Supreme Court's workload, although, as one judge boasted, they can't reverse them all."
His analysis points out that Sotomayor has been very willing to apply the AEDPA and she did not show the hostility to the statute that other federal judges demonstrated (including ironically enough Justice Souter, see my previous post on Souter).
Once again, it tends to show that Sotomayor is far from a liberal activist judge. As I stated yesterday, she is a judicial technocrat -- she impartially follows the laws as written. Precisely what a judge is supposed to do.
In this vein, Scheidegger concludes:
"On the whole, these are well-considered, well-written opinions that apply the language of the statute and the precedents of higher courts, easily within the limits in which reasonable people may differ."
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