A round-up of commentary and reporting on President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, focusing on the implications for business and business law…
Walter Olson of the Manhattan Institute has a dispassionate, analytical piece at Overlawyered.com, “Obama’s ‘Wise Latina’“:
Issues of business law don’t come across as Sotomayor’s great passion one way or the other, so it’s hard to know what all this portends for the high court’s direction on business issues should she be confirmed. As Home Depot‘s Bernard Marcus and others have pointed out, for all of David Souter’s predictable role on the court’s liberal side in most high-profile cases, he in fact steered to middle-of-the-road, hard-to-characterize views on many issues of litigation, liability and procedure, either as a swing vote or as the author of opinions. (Two key issues to watch: what sort of constitutional restraints, if any, there are on punitive damages, and how much scrutiny judges should give to initial pleadings to determine whether a federal lawsuit ought to go forward.)
Some of her backers say they expect that Sotomayor will emerge as a liberal in the less than fiery, relatively “legalistic” Ginsburg/Breyer mold. Even assuming that happens, some outcomes will soon change in a direction most businesses will find adverse. And in coming weeks, both friends and foes will be going over her published opinions–some with hope, others with dread–for clues to whether she might form the nucleus of some future new and more seriously left-wing faction on the court.
Also reporting on Sotomayor and business was Nathan Koppel at the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog, “Sotomayor and Business: ‘No Reason . . . to be Concerned’“:
The judge, for example, has sided with defendants in cases involving the standards that govern when cases can be brought as a class actions and the extent to which plaintiffs’ claims can be preempted by more defense-friendly federal or international laws.
“There is no reason for the business community to be concerned,” says Lauren Rosenblum Goldman, a partner at Mayer Brown LLP. The judge has “ruled in favor of preemption about half of the times” that the issue has been presented to her, she says.
Two cases that went before the Second Circuit of Appeals on which Judge Sotomayor sits were certainly high-profile ones that concerned business; the National Association of Manufacturers was involved through filing of amicus briefs.
