Dispatches from the Culture Wars

And Greenfield responds:

So the spectrum runs from guilty and unremorseful all the way to guilty and drug addicted. Has she seen the police lie to her about their beating a defendant, or tailor testimony to make fools of judges who have provided a roadmap to subvert the law? Has she seen the Youtube videos of our police caught engaging their "new professionalism?" Has she looked into the eyes of a defendant imprisoned for decades for a crime he didn't do because some zealous young prosecutor decided that the police and/or eyewitness could never be wrong?

That Judge Sotomayor's career within criminal law kept her in the hallways of 1 Hogan Place, just long enough to make it out of criminal court to handle a few Supreme Court cases doesn't mean that she didn't come to realize that it's a dirty, ugly business. But if so, her time at Foley Square gave no indication of it. She was unremarkable as a district court and circuit judge when it came to recognizing reality on the street, fitting in well with those who would never believe an agent to lie or do harm. The "wise Latina" was one of the boys, her experience notwithstanding.

Barkow's point is both important and horrible. Judge Sonia Sotomayor may well become the Supreme Court's reality check on criminal law cases. At worst, she would be the ballast to Judge Alito's perspective in the District of New Jersey. Will she provide balance to Judge Alito, or will the ship list hard to starboard?

In the effort to soften the image that Jeff Sessions wishes to craft of Judge Sotomayor as some weird liberal activist, a characterization that's as absurd as it is baseless, her supporters proffer the view that the forces of order need not fear her as, our Vice President proclaimed, she's "got your back." Biden was just being honest.

This is probably a bit too certain. To this point, Sotomayor has been constrained by ambition, in her early days, and by precedent as a federal judge. Once on the court those constraints are gone and it wouldn't be shocking to see a different perspective emerge. That, after all, was the whole point of giving judges lifetime tenure, so that they would be unconstrained by political considerations.

There is genuine cause for concern, of course, and I've voiced it myself. Based on what we know to this point, I am predicting that she will be more conservative than Souter on criminal justice issues and I regard that as a very bad thing. But I sure hope I'm wrong. I hope that the independence of the bench pushes her to the left rather than the right on such issues.