Sotomayor not a justice for these times
The road for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor to become a justice is just beginning. Commentator David Frum says she's not a justice for these times. And she's not the only one.
David Frum (David Frum)
More on Commentaries
TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: It's early days in the Sotomayor confirmation fight. There's political money still to be spent as Steve Henn was just talking about. Background checks and Senate hearings yet to come. A lot of ground's going to be covered over the next couple of months. For commentator David Frum, not enough of the right kind of ground.
DAVID FRUM: Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will certainly face questioning about Roe v. Wade and same-sex marriage and other hot-button issues at her confirmation hearings. She'll very likely be grilled about executive power and terrorism. Senators will consider her judicial temperament, including reported complaints from former Second Circuit clerks that she has behaved as "kind of a bully on the bench."
Odds are however that she will face almost no questions about commercial law, taxation, and bankruptcy.
This omission would be especially glaring now. The Obama administration is challenging settled principles of commercial law in ways more radical than anything seen since the 1930s. In the Chrysler bankruptcy, it told secured creditors that they were unpatriotic profiteers for asserting their undoubted legal rights. That case now threatens to become a precedent for the looming General Motors bankruptcy and who knows how many other cases.
Yet the current court justices have strikingly little experience as business lawyers. Chief Justice John Roberts has worked for business clients, but always as an appellate litigator -- that is, as a kind of after-the-fact freelance pleader, not a counselor who navigates a company's way through the tangles of existing law. Only one justice, John Paul Stevens, has done much advising of business clients -- half a century ago. And Stevens is the most senior member of the court, aged almost 90.
President Obama has talked of his desire for "empathy" in his nominees. Yet ironically, with this judicial pick, he has confirmed a trend toward judges whose experience of business law is abstract and academic -- who do not know what it means to explain to a client that what was a secured debt yesterday is not a secure debt today. A little empathy for the people who make America's economy go.
How about that for a change?
RYSSDAL: David Frum is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Comments
Comment | Refresh
From Vancouver, BC, 05/29/2009
Frum: as others here have pointed out, you basic premise is contradicted by the facts. Sotomayor is an experienced corporate litigator. Interestingly, she has far more corporate experience than Clarence Thomas, who worked briefly for Monsanto between jobs as an assistant attorney general under Missouri AG John Danforth, and Danforth's legislative assistant in the US Senate.
Comparing Sotomayor and Thomas is instructive - and amply illustrates the bias of conservative critics like Frum. Sotomayor is vastly more qualified for the Supreme Court, as a criminal prosecutor, corporate lawyer and judge. Thomas' resume from the time he was appointed is embarrassingly thin. The only real qualification he had, if it can be called a qualification, was eleven years of service as a loyal Republican civil rights bureaucrat. He had been a judge for barely 2 years, and had produced virtually no written record - books, briefs, opinions or articles - to even enable an assessment of his fitness for the high court. Since his appointment he has been a silent, incurious rubber stamp for conservative wing of the court.
How can Thomas be the model of a worthy Supreme Court justice, and Sotomayor is somehow not good enough?
From San Francisco, CA, 05/28/2009
A word in defense. I thought the piece was refreshing. Judging from the comments here, it obviously struck a nerve, but that is an important role for journalism in a free society. As a nation we are increasingly only tuning in to opinions that reinforce our own. It's nice to see some feather ruffling, however minor, by public radio show.
I, for one, was surprised to hear of the general lack of commercial law experience on the court. Frum's point about the government's willingness to flout the rule of law in the Chrysler bankruptcy is spot-on in my opinion and the dismissal of the bondholders as "unpatriotic speculators" is actually a frightening piece of rhetoric -- and yes, I have an Obama bumber sticker.
I know we're all populists at the moment, but we may soon be relying on the court to check the abuse of economic power of this administration. Frum's comments were unconventional and unexpected and a great addition to the show.
05/28/2009
Creation of Strawman: Odds are David Frum will cheat on his taxes.
Attack: This despicable act is illegal and unpatriotic. For someone to speak for business and taxation to royally screw American is quite ironic. There is no place in America for someone like that.
Noble Conclusion: A little empathy for the people who make America's economy go.
How about that for a change, David?
From David Frum's Neighbor, 05/28/2009
"Yet ironically, with this judicial pick, he has confirmed a trend toward judges whose experience of business law is abstract and academic -- who do not know what it means to explain to a client that what was a secured debt yesterday is not a secure debt today.A little empathy for the people who make America's economy go."
Yo David, I just did a number on the toilet. That has a fully vested empathy of David Frum of the American Strawman Institute.
05/28/2009
"Odds are however that she will face almost no questions about commercial law, taxation, and bankruptcy.
This omission would be especially glaring now. The Obama administration is challenging settled principles of commercial law in ways more radical than anything seen since the 1930s. "
David STRAW-MAN Frum
Definition of David Frum:
A David Frum/straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.
From Charlotte, NC, 05/28/2009
I was so annoyed with this segment but reading the comments makes me feel better. Clearly, I wasn't the only one appalled by the "poor big business" nonsense or David's clear misinformation on Sotamayor...
From San Jose, CA, 05/28/2009
David Frum's comments are typical of the right-wing American Enterprise Institute line. We currently have a supreme court that is so biased towards the interests of business that they see nothing wrong in denying equal pay for equal work. David Frum needs to understand that the Supreme Court is supposed to deal with issues regarding the constitution, not business litigation. I also noticed his "bully on the bench" comment which is unsubstantiated innuendo, that is completely irrelevant to his central argument. This is indeed a poorly written piece that does not belong on NPR
From Emeryville, CA, 05/28/2009
Thanks to previous commenters who've put the lie to Frum's 'facts' on Ms. Sotomayor. Addressing others who believe that Frum doesn't belong on the Marketplace airwaves, think of him as an opportunity for all to be 'civil' as requested!
I heard this piece just as I finished a small, difficult construction project and heard Mr. Crum plead empathy for secured bondholders--'the people who make America's economy go,' and was mordantly amused at his view on who and what makes an economy 'go.'
'The people who make America's economy go' at all levels, contribute positively to the PRODUCTION of actual goods and services with effort, intelligence, and creativity.
Financiers are one of many classes of contributers. Their function--provide speculative capital, make a profit if
successful, and take a bath if not. Over the last thirty years, finance has come to see itself as the most important and indispensable component of a healthy economy--with predictably disastrous results. Mr. Crum is true believer in 'Finance as King,' and we owe him a debt for his fidelity--derisive laughter!
From Framingham, MA, 05/27/2009
Hello, Marketplace, does anybody there fact-check this guy? From a story on NPR the same day: "From 1984 until her appointment to the bench, Sotomayor practiced international business law at the New York-based firm of Pavia & Harcourt LLP. There, she focused on intellectual property issues and litigation and arbitration of commercial and commodity export trading cases, according to her appeals court biography." Are we going to to get a correction?
From MN, 05/27/2009
David Frum's remarks are perfectly predictable, and predictably negative, and patently false in many places. He represents, after all, the people who pay him to say what he says. He still believes that if you lie loud enough and long enough, people will believe it is the truth. There is nothing unpredictable about President Obama's pick for a Supreme court justice. She is exactly the kind of justice that we need on the bench. Someone "whose experience of business law is abstract and academic ..." and who actually knows quite well what it means to explain to clients that what appeared secure yesterday is no longer secure. Someone who will be able to distance herself from the corporate interests, and come down on the side of human beings, who really are the people who make America's economy go, instead of the corporations that take everything away. David and his ilk appear to have forgotten that without middle class people to buy the goods, there can be no economy. It is precisely the practices of the businesses who fund and support the American Enterprise Institute that the economy is in the state of collapse that it has achieved this year. When President Obama speaks of "empathy," he is referring to a human response to a human condition. When David uses the term, he is referring to an abstraction. Corporations don't need “empathy,“ they need “ethics.” It looks like just another carefully crafted attempt to steal the conversation by re-defining the terms to make one party look bad while making another one look pitiable. The only irony here is that David still expects us to not know what he is up to after all these years of disingenuous dishonesty. President Obama, on the other hand, is honestly doing exactly what he said he would do. All in all, I'd say we are getting what we voted for – for once.
From Providence, RI, 05/27/2009
How about David Frum make the economy go. This idea that those meeting with there bond brokers are the 'engine' is pathetic and out of date. Given the state that free market companies like Chrysler and GM have found themselves in, it seems obvious that those owning the assets do not drive the economy. If I have to listen to Frum every week, I would enjoy hearing his report from the fastest growing sectors of the economy (well, from when it was growing) restaurants, fast food, nursing, wal-mart clerk, poultry butcher, etc. Get him into the service economy, which being consumer driven, is what we are supposed to hope will recover.
Better yet have him alternate or even debate with Robert Reich. I know that Reich may sometimes play upon liberal dogma, but the middle ground of reasonable understanding is way closer to him than Mr. Frum.
05/27/2009
I am sorry but just looking at the headline for this story, I knew that it was David Frum. That is how predictable, unoriginal and biased his commentary is.
From Chicago, IL, 05/27/2009
I was embarassed to be listening to public radio during David Frum's comment regarding Sonia Sotomayor. He clearly does not know what he is talking about and I truly believe that WBEZ should not allow this kind of misreporting.
Judge Sotomayor represented corporate clients for almost 8 years from 1984 to 1992 at a corporate law firm in New York named Pavia & Harcourt. (I know it well, my father was Edgar Harcourt).
She litigated commercial cases involving large corporations, many of them international corporations, and addressed important issues of intellectual property and other corporate matters.
I believe that this calls for a correction on the part of WBEZ -- and a retraction from David Frum.
Bernard E. Harcourt
Professor of Law and Political Science
University of Chicago
From NJ, 05/27/2009
Why even bother with this guy? He's clearly a partisan hack.
05/27/2009
Once again, David Frum proves that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
After she left the New York prosecutor's office, Sotomayor worked for eight years as a corporate lawyer, specializing in international commerce (Fiat was a major client). One of her duties was the defense of corporations in product liability cases.
I don't understand why Marketplace keeps giving this empty-headed ideologue a platform. He's clearly nothing but a Republican shill, spouting AEI talking points without regard for the facts.
From New York, NY, 05/27/2009
David Frum's commentary is misleading at best. According to her biography, Ms. Sotomayor spent from 1984 until 1991 in private practice, working for a commercial law firm as a litigator specializing in intellectual property law. Presumably a number of her clients were corporations.
Post a Comment: Please be civil, brief and relevant.
Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments. All comments are moderated. Marketplace reserves the right to edit any comments on this site and to read them on the air if they are extra-interesting. Please read the Comment Guidelines before posting.
You must be 13 or over to submit information to American Public Media. The information entered into this form will not be used to send unsolicited email and will not be sold to a third party. For more information see Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy.