Sotomayor Hearing Witness List:
The Senate Judiciary Committee has released the list of witnesses who will testify at Judge Sonia SOtomayor's confirmation hearings. There are some familiar names on the list, including two of conspirators: Ilya Somin and David Kopel.
The kvetching begins already. Why does this matter to you? This is Brent Bozell-like non-substantive silliness, unless you believe that the minority witnesses can't address the issues on their merits. Is it because the ABA was on the Majority List for the Alito confirmation hearings? Let the testimony stand on its own.
I am interested to hear what David Cone is going to share with the committee.
If I recall correctly, Cone was a longtime players' union rep as well, and may in fact have been in the leadership at the time.
Is there precedent for litigants testifying on the nomination for higher Court of a judge who ruled in their cases? It seems kind of silly.
I think it's the whole empathy thing. But I agree with you that it's silly.
What does the 'Esq.' mean, apart from Esquire? Seems silly to include it just to indicate he's a lawyer.
According to this blog post, John G.S. Flym, the losing attorney in the Vanguard case that Alito forgot to recuse himself from, testified for the minority at the Alito hearings. Not sure how on-point that is, but it's something.
Frank Ricci? Really?
It just says that they are witnesses called by the minority party, not what their testimony will be.
I also agree David Cone testifying seems rather silly ... my morbid sense of humor hopes positive steroid tests from Cone get leaked before the hearing just for the added entertainment value.
Good, then there's still a chance.
Probably not a good idea. But at least it was the attorney, and not just the losing party
Remember, the witnesses called in committee hearings are not necessarily those who shed the most light on the matter at hand. There is often a kabuki theater element to committee hearings. You often need to find witnesses who are from the chairman's and ranking member's respective home states, who represent important stakeholders, and so forth, in addition to an expert. The key in pulling off a good hearing is finding people in the former categories who are also in the latter categories.
Bear in mind that the senators are often getting one-on-one briefings from other experts. They may even meet as a group with other experts for an off-the-record briefing. It's not as those they shut out information outside of the official committee hearing.
At Alito's hearings, several of his colleagues testified, including some liberal judges, in his favor. I thought that was effective and relevant.
I remember how well it worked out the last time we had baseball players testifying in front of Congress...
(PS - Hi, Orin!)
I too would question why no peer judges off her bench are testifying. That's supposedly one of her strengths, her experience, and those judges should be able to support that strength. Curious.
I promise David Cone's testimony will be at least as informed as Jim Bunning's vote.
Too bad Senator Bunning isn't on the Judiciary Committee. He and Cone could spend the time debating which was the better pitcher.
Also, I am a bit surprised that the Republicans don't have one more member (according to the Senate Judiciary Committee's website, there are 12 Democrats and 7 Republicans, including Al Franken). Since Senate committees are proportionately based, a 12-8 Democratic/Republican ratio would accurately reflect the 60-40 Senate split.
Judge Sotomayor earned $3,773,824 since 1988 + received $381,775 in loans = $4,155,599 + her 1976-1987 earnings,
yet disclosed assets worth only $543,903 in her answers to the Questionnaire of the Senate Judiciary Committee and
likewise withheld from it the DeLano Case, which reveals her participation in a cover-up of concealment of assets as part of a judicially run and tolerated bankruptcy fraud scheme.
By Dr. Richard Cordero, Esq.
Judicial-Discipline-Reform.org
Dr.Richard.Cordero.Esq@gmail.com
This article with all its supporting endnotes and the copy of the summary order that Judge Sotomayor withheld from the Senate Judiciary Committee can be downloaded here.
The table collecting her financial information with its meticulous endnotes is here.
I think Arlen Specter's party switch is the culprit here.
Thay may be, but the ADDITION of Senator Franken to the committee exacerbates the ratio problem.
Why do you think Mr. Cordero is not on the minority witness list as an aggrieved litigant?
As a former volunteer on Capitol Hill who helped arrange hearings and lining up witnesses, I learned that it is not to investigate, but to put on a show in which the well-connected or celebrities will say what they are programmed to say.
At one Senate hearing I was standing on the side of the room feeding questions to the senators and the answers to the witnesses, neither of which had a clue about the subject matter.
There was some interesting empirical research that attempted to quantify the accuracy of "expert" testimony to come up with track records, especially for predictions, using various models of what constituted accuracy, and how to weight things like false positives, false negatives, hedged bets, etc. They found, among other things, that while most traditional measures of expertise actually had little effect on accuracy (status, job, etc.), being the sort of ideologue that Congress loves to call on both sides had a very noticeable negative effect on accuracy, which is probably not surprising to anyone. So I suppose it's just as well that they aren't actually trying to get information out of such hearings.
The author has the only slightly tongue-in-cheek suggestion that maybe the public would be well served by appending batting averages of sorts to expert commentary, even with generous error ranges, like "So-and-so, Economist, Some Institute, 10-40% accuracy".
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