What Kind of Justice Will Sotomayor Be?

By Scott Lemieux 

The confirmation hearings for Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, begin today. The hearings are unlikely, however, to produce a great deal of useful information.    Since the defeat of Robert Bork -- who had been all too candid about his views on specific constitutional issues, particularly Roe v. Wade, which he would have been the fifth vote to overrule in 1992 had he been confirmed -- successful nominees have mastered the art of sounding smart while saying nothing.     As a result, in his very useful  recent book about the confirmation process, Christopher Eisgruber persuasively argues that the "Senate should evaluate nominees on the basis of their record and reputation, just as presidents do." 

But how to evaluate this record?   One method used by political scientists is Segal-Cover scores, which use newspaper editorials to predict the ideological direction of a future justice's votes.    Despite the relative simplicity of the method, it's quite effective at predicting future judicial votes.   According to her Segal-Cover scores, we should expect Sotomayor to be liberal by the standards of the current Republican-dominated Court, but a moderate liberal by historical standards:

  

Jeffrey Segal, who helped develop the system for grading nominees' perceived ideological leanings, told NationalJournal.com in early June that Sotomayor would likely have a similar score to Ginsburg -- around 0.68 on the 0-1 scale, with 0 being most conservative. If that's the case, Sotomayor would rank as one of the more liberal judges to be nominated since 1937, but she would hardly approach figures such as William Brennan or Thurgood Marshall, both of whom rate at 1 on the scale. Ginsburg currently ranks as the court's 17th most liberal nominee going back to the FDR administration. The 10 most conservative nominees during that period include four current justices: Antonin Scalia (he tops the list with a score of 0), Samuel Alito (0.10), Chief Justice John Roberts (0.12) and Clarence Thomas (0.16). Former Chief Justice William Rehnquist comes in third, with a score of 0.05, and President Reagan's failed nominee Robert Bork is up there as well, with a score of 0.10.

To reiterate what I said in my last post, I don't mean to suggest that Segal-Cover scores can, in themselves, provide all the necessary information. Dichotomous characterizations of Supreme Curt decisions leave out many possible nuances in individual cases, and how a justice is perceived before his or her hearings is a good but far from perfect indicator. Still, these scores have been useful in the past, and are likely to provide more useful information about Sotomayor than the hearings == at least if she's been well-coached.

Comments

[Larry Baker]

This blog post has been prescient. The Sotomayor hearings have played out exactly as described here. However, I'm afraid that none of the senators have seemed very interested in truly evaluating her record. They preened for key interest groups and fished for memorable sound bites.

Nevertheless, thanks for pointing to the Segal-Cover scores-- interesting stuff.

[Joe]

The S/C for Stevens and Souter didn't work well.

[firstamendmentblogger]

I cite this post at The Faculty Lounge: http://www.thefacultylounge.org/2009/08/sotomayor.html

Would love to have your comment about Sotomayor's scores, and the Segal-Cover system generally - as you can see we're unsure about some specifics.

Thanks, Kathy Bergin

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