Thursday, May 28, 2009

And yet another reason to oppose Sotamayor's nomination.

She does not favor freedom of speech when it's a high school student versus government officials, specifically her school's superintendent and other school officials.

I understand that most school administrators would rather cut off possible problems at the pass, but I do not believe that referring to the school officials as "douche bags" on an off-campus, non-school-related personally owned and written blog should be grounds for barring a senior in high school from running for student body president. Like as not, the senior in question was being honest and accurate.

In any case, it not only seems as if this judge ruled in violation of a young adult's constitutionally protected rights, but that the ruling implied that she might well apply similar politically correct (i.e., you can't offend anybody with your words) reasoning in other first amendment cases.

And that, as much as her "empathy," scares me.

3 comments:

  1. I have a long-delayed post I haven't yet written on the free speech rights of juveniles. I'm not as much of a supporter as some of untrammeled free speech for teens, even (or especially) in school. But controlling blog speech not connected with the school? Wrong. That comment of "risk of substantial disruption” was just dumb.

    I don't know the details of the case, but based on what little detail is reported, I'd consider this a small black mark against Sotomayor. It would be a much bigger black mark if demonstrated that she would treat different politics differently, but I don't see evidence of that here.

    More troubling is the "wise Latina" comment, but even that is not as bad as some make out. With the full quote in context, it's still not good but not as bad as some say. Bad choice of words, but without seeing more I'll try to withhold judgment and be fair.

    I'd still (probably) oppose her on what I suspect is her judicial philosphy, but I don't want to "Bork" anybody as the Dems do.

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  2. This was just further reason for me not to like her as a candidate. I mentioned, earlier this week, that 60% of her decisions have been reversed as unconstitutional, or otherwise incorrectly ruled, by higher courts.

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  3. HH: "60% of her decisions have been reversed as unconstitutional,"

    DAR
    Which is better than average. See:

    "Myths and falsehoods surrounding the Sotomayor nomination"

    ***
    MYTH: Sotomayor's Supreme Court reversal rate is "high

    "In a May 27 article headlined "Sotomayor reversed 60% by high court," The Washington Times uncritically quoted Conservative Women for America president Wendy Wright saying that Sotomayor's reversals -- which the Times reported as three of five cases, or 60 percent -- were "high." Similarly, on May 26, Congressional Quarterly Today uncritically quoted (subscription required) Wendy Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, claiming that Sotomayor "has an extremely high rate of her decisions being reversed, indicating that she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court." In fact, contrary to the claim that a reversal rate of 60 percent is "high," data compiled by SCOTUSblog since 2004 show that the Supreme Court has reversed more than 60 percent of the federal appeals court cases it considered each year."

    http://mediamatters.org/research/200905270049

    D.

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