Sonia Sotomayor

Obama Fires Inspector General Who Uncovered Fraud, and Honors Defrauder Instead

by Hans Bader on June 11, 2010

in Economy, Employment, Energy, Environment, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere, Trade, Zeitgeist

Earlier, President Obama fired the inspector general for the AmeriCorps program after he uncovered fraud by Obama crony Kevin Johnson.  (Johnson did not receive even a slap on the wrist for his fraud; an organization Johnson ran was required to pay $350,000, but it never did so because it was insolvent; and Johnson himself was not ordered by the Obama administration to pay anything.)

Now, the Obama administration is honoring Johnson despite his fraud, inviting him to be a featured speaker at an event for AmeriCorps, the program Johnson defrauded.

The Obama administration fired the inspector general who uncovered the fraud, Gerald Walpin, falsely claiming he was a senile right-winger, even though Walpin was a successful lawyer with recent high-profile court victories who had uncovered millions in fraud against taxpayers, and even though Walpin, a northeastern moderate Republican, was sufficiently non-partisan that he endorsed Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor.  (The Obama administration even trumpeted Walpin’s endorsement of Sotomayor to push her nomination.)

Supreme Court Overturns Life Sentences Without Parole for Violent Juveniles, Citing “International Opinion”

by Hans Bader on May 17, 2010 · 3 comments

in Culture, International, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, Zeitgeist

The Supreme Court has just held that violent juveniles cannot be given a life sentence without the opportunity for parole, unless they succeed in killing their victim. Even torturers and rapists who attempt to commit murder cannot be denied the opportunity for release under the Court’s decision today in Graham v. Florida.

Most states have long authorized life sentences without parole for vicious 17-year-olds who commit rape and attempted murder. But the Court looked instead to “international opinion” to declare such sentences “cruel and unusual,” writing that “The United States adheres to a sentencing practice rejected the world over,” illustrating “the climate of international opinion” against life without parole.

The Court’s opinion was joined in by all the liberal Supreme Court justices–including Obama’s appointee, Sonia Sotomayor–and authored by swing vote Anthony Kennedy.  Conservative justices Alito, Thomas, and Scalia dissented.

Chief Justice Roberts agreed with the liberal majority only that the defendant in this particular case deserved a chance for parole.  But he disagreed with its sweeping ruling that all violent juveniles must be given a chance for parole unless they succeeded in killing their victim. He cited the examples of nightmarishly evil people who will now be given an opportunity for parole thanks to the Supreme Court:

“But what about Milagro Cunningham, a 17-year-old who beat and raped an 8-year-old girl before leaving her to die under 197 pounds of rock in a recycling bin in a remote landfill?” asked the Chief Justice. “Or Nathan Walker and Jakaris Taylor, the Florida juveniles who together with their friends gang-raped a woman and forced her to perform oral sex on her 12-year-old son?”  These vicious predators will now be free to seek parole.

The Court’s decision today illustrates that the Supreme Court is a liberal court, not a moderate or conservative court. The great majority of states–even “Blue States” like California–permit life without parole for violent juvenile torturers and rapists.  The Court ignored the wisdom of the sages, such as the ancient maxim that “he who is kind to the cruel is cruel to the kind.”

In relying on “international opinion” to decide the case, the Supreme Court ignored the pleas of civil libertarians and libertarian think tanks like the Cato Institute not to smuggle international standards into the interpretation of the American Constitution, since doing so is a dangerous precedent: international law and opinion are often hostile to important American civil liberties like free speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion; the right to self-defense against home intruders; and laws designed to secure those protections.

The libertarian Cato Institute, which frequently files amicus briefs in the Supreme Court seeking to promote civil liberties and privacy rights, filed an amicus brief in today’s case asking the court not to rely on “international norms,” since doing so would “undermine the democratic process and rule of law, casting considerable uncertainty over many U.S. laws.” (Disclosure: Competitive Enterprise Institute joined that brief.)  Sadly, the Court ignored that brief.

Courts should not rely on “international opinion” to decide cases, since it is vague and manipulable.  So-called international law is applied selectively by lawyers and judges, who cite real or imagined ”international law”  to push the ideological goals they support, while ignoring actual international court rulings they don’t like.

Left-wing lawyers take vague international treaties and interpret them as mandating liberals’ ideological wishlists, like restricting criticism of Islam and minority religions as “hate speech,” banning Mother’s Day as sexist, and mandating quota-based affirmative action. For example, the CEDAW equal-rights treaty has been construed by an international committee as requiring “redistribution of wealth,” “affirmative action,” “gender studies” in academia, government-sponsored “access to rapid and easy abortion,” “comparable worth,” and “the application of quotas and numerical goals and measurable targets aimed at increasing women’s political participation.” Never mind that most countries don’t even have affirmative action.

But they ignore foreign law and world opinion when it calls into question liberal policies in the United States. One classic example is the horror that most countries’ courts have for the American practice of letting virtually unguided juries award punitive damages. In most of the world, punitive damages are forbidden.  But you will never see a liberal Supreme Court justice talk about “international law” or “international opinion” when it comes to punitive damages, which are sacrosanct in the eyes of many liberal judges.

Ultimately, even liberals may come to regret the reliance on “international opinion” by today’s Supreme Court decision, which sets a dangerous precedent for civil liberties.

In USA Today, liberal law professor Jonathan Turley earlier criticized the Obama administration for foolishly endorsing a “blasphemy” exception to free speech at the UN, in an effort to curry favor with Muslim countries: “Around the world, free speech is being sacrificed on the altar of religion. Whether defined as hate speech, discrimination or simple blasphemy, governments are declaring unlimited free speech as the enemy of freedom of religion. This growing movement has reached the United Nations, where religiously conservative countries received a boost in their campaign to pass an international blasphemy law. It came from the most unlikely of places: the United States.”

Turley says Western blasphemy cases have included the arrest of a Dutch cartoonist for depicting Christian and Muslim fundamentalists as zombies; the investigation of an Italian comedian for joking that in 20 years, the Pope will be in hell; the exclusion of a Dutch politician from Britain because he made a movie describing Islam’s holy book as “fascist”; and the prosecution of writers for calling Mohammed a “pedophile” because of his marriage to 6-year-old Aisha (which was consummated when she was 9).

Earlier, conservatives and civil libertarians criticized the Obama administration for endorsing restrictions on so-called “hate speech” at the United Nations in an effort to ingratiate itself with other countries. The Administration is backing proposals to classify hate speech as a violation of international human rights law.  Some left-wing lawyers are now likely to argue that these proposals constitute “customary international law” binding on the U.S., as a consensus interpretation of treaties the U.S. has already signed, like the CEDAW equal rights treaty. The U.S. courts are unlikely to accept such arguments in the near future, although if Obama manages to appoint enough left-wing judges, the chances of such arguments prevailing will increase.

In Canada, hate speech laws have been used to punish ministers for anti-gay sermons. In the U.S., college hate-speech codes have been used to discipline students for criticizing affirmative action, writing about the racial implications of the death penalty, and calling homosexuality immoral. Ironically, hate speech laws have often been used against minorities in the Third World, with prosecutors arguing that advocating the rights of minorities is an inflammatory form of racial separatism.

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of White and Hispanic Firefighters in Ricci v. DeStefano

by Hans Bader on June 29, 2009 · 3 comments

in Economy, Employment, Features, Labor, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Zeitgeist

The Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of white and Hispanic firefighters, who were denied promotions when the City of New Haven threw out the exam they scored highest on, citing the fact that no black firefighter scored high enough. In Ricci v. DeStefano, the Court reversed a decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, including Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whom Obama has nominated to the Supreme Court.

The appeals court, in an unpublished ruling designed to avoid scrutiny, had held that the City could throw out the test simply because the test excluded more blacks than whites, meaning it gave rise to a “prima facie” case of unintentional “disparate impact” discrimination (disparate-impact is when a test excludes substantially more members of one race or gender than another). The Supreme Court held that this was not reason enough to use race, at least where the test measures useful job skills.

“Frank Ricci, a firefighter in New Haven, Conn., worked hard, played by the rules, and earned a promotion to fire lieutenant. But the city denied him the promotion because he is not black. Ricci sued, along with 16 other whites and one Hispanic firefighter. After a 7-6, near-party-line vote by a federal Appeals Court to dismiss the lawsuit,” the Supreme Court decided to review the case. A three-judge panel including Judge Sotomayor had “dismissed” of Ricci’s case in an unpublished ruling, “in a process so peculiar as to fan suspicions that some or all of the judges were embarrassed by the ugliness of the actions that they were blessing and were trying to sweep the case quietly under the rug, perhaps to avoid Supreme Court review or public criticism, or both,” says the National Journal.

The lower courts have divided on how much public employers can use race-based affirmative action to offset tests or selection criteria with “disparate impact” without violating the Constitution. Some courts, like the moderate Seventh Circuit, have said that that public employers can’t use race at all to offset such tests or criteria, since the purpose of affirmative action is to remedy constitutional violations, and the Constitution (unlike some civil rights statutes) isn’t violated by disparate impact, but rather requires a showing of racism or intentional discrimination. Others, like the more liberal First Circuit, say that race can be used to offset tests’ “disparate impact” even if the test measures useful job skills and thus is “job-related,” as long as substantially more minorities fail it than whites — meaning that the “disparate impact” is only a “prima facie” or half-proven case, which doesn’t actually rise to the level of illegality (the civil-rights statute, Title VII, only bans tests with a “disparate impact” if they are not “job-related”).

In the Ricci case decided today, the Supreme Court took a middle path, saying that a mere racial imbalance (or “prima facie” case of disparate impact) is not enough to use race, but that disparate impact can be enough reason if there is “strong evidence” that the test not only excludes more blacks than whites, but also is not “job related” in the sense of requiring knowledge irrelevant to the job. Since the City of New Haven had no strong evidence that the test was not job-related, its decision to throw out the test was illegal.

However, it cautioned that this standard only limited statutory challenges to affirmative action, as opposed to Constitutional challenges, applying this standard to Title VII claims so that employers won’t face a discrimination claim no matter what they do (for intentional discrimination against whites if they throw out the test, or unintentional “disparate impact” discrimination if they keep the test that no blacks passed). It said that public employers might face additional requirements before they could use race under the Constitution (which, unlike Title VII, does not recognize “unintentional” discrimination or “disparate-impact” liability): “Our statutory holding does not address the constitutionality of the measures taken here in purported compliance with Title VII. We also do not hold that meeting the strong-basis-in-evidence standard would satisfy the Equal Protection Clause in a future case. As we explain below,because respondents have not met their burden under Title VII, we need not decide whether a legitimate fear of disparate impact is ever sufficient to justify discriminatory treatment under the Constitution.”

Thus, the Court’s decision does not abrogate the rulings of the federal appeals court in Chicago, the Seventh Circuit, which ruled in People Who Care v. Rockford Board of Education, 111 F.3d 528, 534 (7th Cir. 1997) Biondo v. Chicago, 382 F.3d 680, 681 (7th Cir. 2004), and Builders Association v. Chicago, that to defeat a constitutional lawsuit brought by victims of affirmative action or reverse discrimination, a public employer cannot rely on a test or selection criterion’s disparate impact. For example, Chief Judge Posner ruled in People Who Care v. Rockford Board of Education, 111 F.3d 528, 534 (7th Cir. 1997), that to use race to favor minorities, a school district must show that it once “discriminated intentionally” against them, since that is “the only kind of discrimination that violates the equal protection clause.”

Today’s decision does, however, effectively abrogate court rulings saying that a test’s mere “prima facie” disparate impact is enough to justify using race, given that the Supreme Court in United Steelworkers v. Weber, 443 U.S. 193, 206 fn. 6 (1979) said that the limits on affirmative action are tougher under the Constitution than under civil-rights statutes like Title VII, which was “not intended to incorporate” the tougher “commands of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.” (The rulings allowing race to be used to offset tests’ racial imbalances are also hard to square with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that race-based affirmative action is supposed to be a “last resort,” see Bartlett v. Strickland, 129 S.Ct. 1231, 1247 (2009)).

Justice Alito, in his concurring opinion, noted that there was an additional, independent ground for reversing the appeals court decision throwing out the white and Hispanic firefighters’ lawsuit: that the whole issue of tests’ alleged “disparate impact” was a red herring and a “pretext” because the appeals court ignored evidence that the City’s motivation was not a sincere desire to avoid “disparate impact” but rather just an excuse to engage in racial favoritism towards blacks.

Even if the City had legitimate motives for throwing out the test, if it also had illegitimate or mixed motives, that would render it liable under Title VII (and potentially the Constitution), under the Supreme Court’s “mixed-motives” precedents. (See Mount Healthy Bd. of Educ. v. Doyle (1977), and Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins (1989)). The city could only rely on the test’s “disparate impact” if that were its “actual purpose” for using race, and could not use any problems with the test as a justification if they “did not actually precipitate the use of race.” (See Shaw v. Hunt, 517 U.S. 899, 908 n.4, 910 (1996)).

Cheers for Indiana Treasurer’s halt to Chrysler Bankruptcy

by John Berlau on June 4, 2009

in Bailout Watch, Features, Zeitgeist

Kudos to the judges on the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals for putting a stay on the Obama administration’s nationalization scheme for the bankruptcy sale of Chrysler LLC. Kudos also to Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock for standing up for the middle-income teachers and police officers in the state pension funds and making sure that contracts affecting their retirement savings are respected.

When President Obama announced the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, who coincidentally is an appeals court judge on the Second Circuit, he praised judicial qualities that are directly relevant to the courts overseeing the bankruptcies of Chrysler and General Motors. The president said that the qualities he most respected in judges were, “a commitment to impartial justice, a respect for precedent, and a determination to faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand,” as well as “an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live.”

As such, President Obama and his auto task force should respect the role of the bankruptcy courts and recognize that their role is not to rubber stamp the administration’s plan to take over Chrysler and GM, but to apply bankruptcy precedents and faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand, with an understanding of how contracts work in the real world and of the “ordinary people” who own the car companies’ debt securities as individual investors or through their IRAs and 401(k)s.

The bankruptcy judges also need to look beyond the individual circumstances of Chrysler and GM to weigh how the treatment of creditor contracts in these cases will affect American credit markets in the future. If courts cave to politicians’ whims and give secured creditors and bondholders less than they would receive under traditional bankruptcy precedents, our credit markets will suffer further damage as lenders and investors will be less willing to put their capital at risk in companies whose contracts could be abrogated at politicians’ demand.

Bankruptcy is a not an executive but a judicial function, and judges in the car companies’ cases should take as much time as they need to weigh the competing interests and ensure an equitable outcome. The measure of success should not be how fast Chrysler and GM emerge from this bankruptcy, but the degree to which contracts are honored in an impartial process.

Bankruptcy judge should put breaks on “Government Motors”

by John Berlau on June 2, 2009 · 1 comment

in Bailout Watch, Features, Legal, Nanny State, Odds & Ends, Politics as Usual

Last week, in nominating Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, President Obama praised judicial qualities that are directly relevant to the courts that will now oversee the bankruptcy of General Motors. The president said that the qualities he most respected in judges were, ”a commitment to impartial justice, a respect for precedent, and a determination to faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand,” as well as “an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live.”

As such, President Obama and his auto task force should respect the role of the bankruptcy court and recognize that its role is not to rubber stamp the administration’s plan to take over GM, but to apply bankruptcy precedents and faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand, with an understanding of how contracts work in the real world and of the “ordinary people” who own General Motors bonds as individual investors or through their IRAs and 401(k)s.

The Administration’s reorganization plan, in which the government owns more than 70 percent of the stock will not serve taxpayers, middle-class investors or ultimately the American auto industry and its workers well. There is no reason why the taxpayer money outlayed to GM – a mistake of both the Bush and Obama administrations – justifies the Obama administration’s demand for such a large ownership stake for the government and the United Auto Workers. The Chrysler bailout of the 1980s, while a troubling precedent for government rescues of industries, was resolved with taxpayers reimbursed without any government ownership stake.

The government ownership is already leading to politicization of questions ranging from dealership closings to the making of “environmentally correct” cars. Such decisions being made by politicians and bureaucrats means that restoring the company’s profitability — and paying the taxpayers back — will take a back seat to the goals of constituencies the government favors.

But bankruptcy courts also have to look beyond GM to weigh how the treatment of bondholder contracts in this case will affect American credit markets in the future. Much is made of how 54 percent of bondholders apparently approve of the revised settlement. But this is well short of the 90 percent that was originally the goal of the Obama auto task force.

And bankruptcy courts, according to the Associated Press,  traditionally only approve a Chapter 11 reorganization that has the approval of two-thirds of the claims for each class of bondholder. If courts cave to politicians’ whims and give bondholders less than they would receive under traditional bankruptcy precedents, the credit markets will suffer further damage as lenders and investors will be less willing to put their capital at risk in companies whose contracts could be abrogated at politicians’ demand.

Bankruptcy is a not an executive but a judicial function, and judges in the GM case should take as much time as they need to weigh the competing interests and ensure an equitable outcome. The measure of success should not be how fast GM emerges from this bankruptcy, but the degree to which contracts are honored in an impartial process.

Where have you gone, Judge Narragansett? (Brush up on your Atlas Shrugged!)

Sotomayor NOT first Hispanic Justice — Cardozo was

by John Berlau on May 26, 2009 · 9 comments

in Odds & Ends

Whatever happens with the confirmation of President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, one thing is clear: she will not be the first hispanic or Latino to serve on the Supreme Court. This is a historical — and not a predictive – statement.

The reason Judge Sotomayor will not be the first hispanic on the Court is that the first justice of hispanic origin was already nominated — by a Republican President — and confirmed by the Senate to serve on the Supreme Court more than 70 years ago. This would be Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo, who also has the distinction of being the second Jewish justice on the Court.

A diverse array of sources from a mural of hispanic achievements at the Guatemalan fried chicken chain Pollo Campero to a post on leading liberal blog site Daily Kos make the case that Cardozo was actually the first hispanic justice. Nominated by Herbert Hoover to serve on the Court in 1932, Cardozo was descended from the Sephardic Jews, who lived in the Iberian Peninsula that includes Spain and Portugal.

Whether his ancestors came from directly from Spain is hard to determine – and the geographical boundaries of modern Spain and Portugal have changed a few times – but as the Daily Kos poster (sympathetic to Sotomayor) notes, “there is no question that Cardozo was a Portuguese American.” 

The Kos poster points out that while the U.S. Census Bureau doesn’t consider Portugese descent to qualify one as hispanic,  “the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Small Business Administration, in addition to other federal, state, and municipal agencies, do recognize Portuguese under the umbrella term of Hispanic.”

If coming from Spain and Portugal does not get one counted as “hispanic,” why should the simple step of coming through Brazil (in the case of Portugal) or the rest of Latin America automatically get one placed in this category. The Kos poster argues that ”perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Sotomayor would be the first non-white Hispanic on the Supreme Court.”

But even Sotomayor’s “non-whiteness” is unclear. This is because a  majority of those who identify themselves as hispanic to the Census Bureau also check their race as “white” on the same form. The magnitude is so large that many polls have to separate out hispanics from whites through the demographic category of  “white not hispanic.”

It is also not simply a matter of saying that a certain amount of Native American blood makes one a non-white hispanic. There are many non-hispanic whites who can trace part of their ancestry to Native Americans, yet are still classified as “white.” Moreover, the government really shouldn’t be in the business of determining how much “blood” of an ethnic or racial groups an individual carries.

None of this dicussion is to take away from Sotomayor’s achievements and humble origins (although this alone doesn’t justify a Supreme Court seat). But if we are going to celebrate the naming of a hispanic appointment to the court, we should also celebrate the diversity within the hispanic community. As well, we should reflect on the absurdity of the government’s racial and ethnic classification system. I wrote an article covering some of this absuridy in Investor’s Business Daily in 1998

In any event, Justice Cardozo wouln’t be a bad path for Sotomayor or whoever becomes Obama’s justice to follow. Cardozo ended up being a one of the Court’s liberals, but back then the liberals on the Supreme Court were the ones who practiced judicial restraint by not striking down New Deal laws.

Yet he stood up to President Franklin D. Roosevelt in one very important descision. In the Schechter Poulty case, Cardozo wrote a concurring opinion striking down the National Industrial Recovery Act, which mandated broad industry price and output controls. The Court ruled that Congress had unconstitutionally delegated its lawmaking powers to the boards enforcing these controls. “The delegated power of legislation which has found expression in this code is not canalized within banks that keep it from overflowing,” Cardozo wrote.

LibertyWeek 42: Hugo Chávez, Robber Baron

by Richard Morrison on May 12, 2009 · 1 comment

in CEI Projects, Podcast

Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist bring back special guest co-host Jeremy Lott to create the work of art known as Episode 42. We start with the continuing buzz over the Supreme Court’s next member, President Obama’s trillion dollar healthcare plan, and an update on how Hugo Chávez is turning Venezuela’s petroleum reserves into his personal piggybank. We add good news from East Texas for beer drinkers, bad news from Europe for technophiles and sad news from Philly for basketball fans.

Listen to the episode HERE.

Bye Bye, Justice Souter

by Hans Bader on May 1, 2009

in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual

Liberal Supreme Court Justice David Souter is retiring. On social issues, this makes little difference: whoever replaces him will satisfy liberal litmus tests, like supporting racial preferences and partial-birth abortion the way Souter did.

But on economics, where Souter was more moderate, it will matter a lot: Souter was willing to occasionally overturn excessive punitive damage awards, and overturn state regulations that were preempted by federal law (like in Watters v. Wachovia (2007), where I filed a brief on behalf of economists and law professors). Some of his potential replacements, like Judge Sonia Sotomayor and especially Deval Patrick, will be less likely to do that.

Business will miss Souter, even though social conservatives won’t. Obama is more likely to nominate a justice hostile to taxpayers, business, and property owners, since he has expressed regret that the Supreme Court “didn’t break free” from legal constraints in order to bring about “redistribution of wealth” during the Warren Court.

Souter’s colleagues will probably miss the unassuming Souter, who did not (unlike some past justices, such as William O. Douglas) lord it over other people. He once lived in a waterfront apartment building in Washington, D.C.’s Southwest quarter right near my wife. We would sometimes see Souter quietly doing his own laundry. Unlike many limousine liberals, who live in wealthy, lily-white, gated communities (even as they advocate forced busing of working-class students between predominantly-black schools and predominantly-white schools), Souter chose to live in a middle-class, racially-mixed community.

A potential replacement for Justice Souter is Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, a vociferous advocate of censorship and racial quotas who helped spawn the mortgage crisis while serving in the Justice Department.

Another candidate for Souter’s seat is “Second Circuit judge Sonia Sotomayor,” who also avidly supports racial quotas. Sotomayor’s “shenanigans in trying to bury the firefighters’ claims in Ricci v. DeStefano triggered an extraordinary dissent by fellow Clinton appointee José Cabranes (and the Supreme Court’s pending review of the ruling).”

Yet another is the tax-and-spend former governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm, a big fan of racial preferences (forbidden by her state’s constitution) who helped drive her state’s economy into the ditch.

Two other candidates also are mentioned who may not be wacky enough to be considered by Obama, even though they both satisfy liberal litmus tests on abortion, affirmative action, and gay rights, and are both women (the conventional wisdom is that Obama will pick a woman, perhaps a Hispanic woman, as the next Supreme Court justice). Those two candidates are Seventh Circuit judge Diane Wood and Ninth Circuit judge Kim Wardlaw, a Hispanic. Neither of these two judges is unusually anti-business, or unusually prone to the “redistribution of wealth” Obama has applauded.

CNN’s political ticker also lists the veteran moderate Judge Jose Cabranes. I don’t think Obama is in any mood to pick a moderate male judge, even a well-respected Hispanic like Cabranes who is well-liked by his home-state Democratic senators, Dodd and Lieberman, and who would easily sail through the Senate. Cabranes may be pro-choice, pro-gay rights, and pro-voting-rights, but he is also anti-crime and pro-free-speech. And he was unwilling to use judicial shenanigans to bury the reverse-discrimination claim in the Ricci case, as Judge Sotomayor did (although it’s worth noting that even the Obama Justice Department reluctantly agreed with Cabranes in that case, urging the Supreme Court to remand the case back down to the lower courts for a proper reconsideration, rather than totally avoiding the issues raised by the aggrieved white employees).