Judge Sotomayor’s participation in Ricci v. DeStefano (the New Haven firefighters case), and her “wise Latina justice” speech have fueled speculation about her approach to cases involving race. To address such concerns, SCOTUSBlog’s Tom Goldstein reviewed all of the cases involving race in which she participated on the Second Circuit. His conclusion:
In sum, in an eleven-year career on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has participated in roughly 100 panel decisions involving questions of race and has disagreed with her colleagues in those cases (a fair measure of whether she is an outlier) a total of 4 times. . . . Given that record, it seems absurd to say that Judge Sotomayor allows race to infect her decisionmaking.
This review is worthwhile, and certainly shows Sotomayor has been a relatively mainstream judge on racial issues during her time on the Second Circuit. But does it show more than that? Goldstein’s SCOTUSBlog colleague, David Stras, comments:
This is an extremely comprehensive study and I do think it is probative of her jurisprudence, but I disagree with Tom that it shows that it is