In making Sonia Sotomayor his first nominee for the Supreme Court yesterday, Barack Hussein Obama appears to have found his ideal match for personal experience and cultural identity as the better part of judicial wisdom.

The Founding Father’s would have a great deal of trouble recognizing Liberal jurisprudence as upholding the US Constitution.

Upon accepting the nomination Ms. Sotomayor said:

“All of the legal defense funds out there, they’re looking for people with Court of Appeals experience because it is — Court of Appeals is where policy is made.  And I know, and I know this is on tape, and I should never say that because we don’t make law, I know. (laughing) Okay, I know.  I know.  I’m not promoting it and I’m not advocating it.  I’m — you know.” (laughing)

Its obvious Obama’s first SCOTUS nominee ignores the Constitution when deciding cases and seems to think it’s funny while she lies to the American people.

Here is how the Supreme Court has judged Ms. Sotomayor:

• In Malesko v. Correctional Services Corp. (2000), Sotomayor ruled that the Court’s 1971 ruling in Bivens, which implied a private action for damages against federal officers alleged to have violated a citizen’s constitutional rights, should be extended to create an implied damages action against a private corporation operating a halfway house under contract with the Bureau of Prisons.  On review (Correctional Services Corp. v. Malesko (2001)), the Court reversed Sotomayor by a 5-4 vote.  Chief Justice Rehnquist’s majority opinion labeled the plaintiff’s claim “fundamentally different from anything recognized in Bivens or subsequent cases.”  In his concurring opinion, Justice Scalia acknowledged that “a broad interpretation of [Bivens’] rationale would doubtless produce [the] application” made by the dissenters (and Sotomayor).  But, as he put it, “Bivens is a relic of the heady days in which this Court assumed common-law powers to create causes of action—decreeing them to be ‘implied’ by the mere existence of a statutory or constitutional prohibition.”  The Court has abandoned that power in the statutory field, and “[t]here is even greater reason to abandon it in the constitutional field, since an ‘implication’ imagined in the Constitution can presumably not even be repudiated by Congress.”

• In Knight v. Commissioner, the Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, reached the same end result as Sotomayor on a tax question, but faulted her for adopting a reading of the relevant statute that “flies in the face of the statutory language.”

• In Merrill Lynch v. Dabit (2006), the Court, in an opinion by Justice Stevens, unanimously (8-0) reversed Sotomayor’s ruling that certain state-law securities claims were not preempted by federal law.  Stevens pointed out that the Court had rejected Sotomayor’s interpretation in cases from 1971 forward.  In New York Times v. Tasini (2001), the Court, by a 7-2 vote, rejected the reading of copyright law that Sotomayor had adopted (as the district judge in the case).

• In Empire Healthchoice Assurance v. McVeigh, the Court, by a vote of 5 to 4, affirmed a ruling by Sotomayor on a question of federal jurisdiction.

• The Court has granted review of Sotomayor’s decision in Riverkeeper v. EPA ruling that certain provisions of the Clean Water Act do not authorize the EPA to engage in cost-benefit analysis in crafting its rules. In April, the Supreme Court overturned 6-3 Sotomayor’s 2007 ruling.

In a speech published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2002, Judge Sotomayor offered her own interpretation of this jurisprudence. (Emphasis LCs)

“Justice [Sandra Day] O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases,” she declared. “I am . . . not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, . . . there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Sotomayor is able to get away with her racist comments because she is a female minority. Imagine Chief Justice Roberts or Justice Alito making similar comments and not facing hell on earth in the press and at confirmation hearings. Judge Sotomayor’s belief is that a “Latina woman” is by definition a superior judge to a “white male” because she has had more “richness” in her struggle.

Sotomayor has been rebuked in writing by Judge Jose Cabranes for opinions that she wrote that had no bearing on the constitutional issues in Ricci v. DeStefano, involving the promotion of white firefighters in New Haven and now pending before the Supreme Court. In the case, heard by a three-judge panel including Judge Sotomayor, the city refused to certify promotion exams when the results of the exam would have elevated 18 white firefighters and one Hispanic — an outcome that would have underrepresented minorities. The firefighters sued, charging discrimination.

In a dissent joined by five of his colleagues, Judge Cabranes criticized the slip-shod handling of the case by a majority that lacked the courage of its racial preference convictions. The “perfunctory disposition” of the opinion, he noted, “lacks a clear statement of either the claims raised by the plaintiffs or the issues on appeal.”

Judge Cabranes added that the discrimination issues raised by the case were “worthy of review” by the Supreme Court, which took the case and may well overturn the Sotomayor panel’s ruling. The case raises the question of whether a judge with an avowed commitment to applying her own “experience” to cases was disinclined to an argument made by those not sharing that personal experience.

Chief Justice John Roberts said in his confirmation hearings that judges should act like umpires — calling the plays, not making them. Barack Hussein Obama wants an active player known as an activist judge and he selected one. Indeed!