Study: Sotomayor Not an 'Outlier' in 2nd Circuit Voting
A study of the 1,194 rulings handed down by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while Judge Sonia Sotomayor served aimed to show where the U.S. Supreme Court nominee fell on the bell curve. What did it find?
“Far from being ‘extreme’ or an ‘outlier,’ Judge Sotomayor’s decision-making in constitutional cases closely comports to the decision-making of other members on the Second Circuit bench,” the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School reported.
The goal of the report—a draft of which is set to be released Thursday—was to bring hard data to the debate over her judging approach, the New York Times’ The Caucus reports.
Sotomayor has a slightly higher rate of striking down governmental actions than the 2nd Circuit’s average, and both her conservative and liberal colleagues usually agreed with her rulings, the study says.
But Monica Youn, the author of thereport, told The Caucus she was most struck by how often Sotomayor agreed with her colleagues, even Republican appointees. According to the report:
• Sotomayor voted with the majority in 98.2 percent of the constitutional cases.
• Republican-appointed judges voted with Sotomayor in 88.2 percent of the cases in which she voted to overturn a government action.
• Republican-appointed judges voted with Sotomayor in 94 percent of cases in which she voted to overrule a district court or an agency.
