On Net, No Change? Not Quite

Andrew M. Grossman / May 26, 2009

Eight hours later, and it’s already become an old canard: Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s elevation to the High Court won’t affect its balance one bit. It may be an effective talking point—the Left seems to think so—but it isn’t true.

Consider just one area of law, business law. As concerns businesses and economic matters, Justice David Souter often rejected the activist “empathy” standard promoted by President Barack Obama to instead cast votes and write opinions that are in accord with the demands of the Constitution and the rule of law.

Judge Sotomayor, however, does not always evince this restraint. In case after case, her “empathy” instinct has run amok. Of the seven of the cases in which her decisions have been reversed or rejected by the Supreme Court (out of the eight total that the Supreme Court has reviewed), six concern business law. A survey of those cases suggests that Sotomayor harbors antipathy for businesses: (more…)