Defending Judge Sotomayor

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Jeff Rosen's bashing this week of Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Second Circuit—who is on all the Supreme Court short lists—is making the rounds. Glenn Greenwald calls Rosen's attack a "smear" and points out his problematic reliance on anonymous sources. I'm just starting to gather string on the judges on the short list, so I called Jamal Greene, a Columbia law professor who clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi, one of Sotomayor's colleagues. Here's his rebuttal of Rosen's unnamed critics:

I was always impressed with her memos. I thought that they always said exactly what was on my mind. One particular opinion that stands out: Hayden v. Pataki. Not sure that's the opinion she'd want to talk about most, because what she wrote was quite short, but I thought it was also quite brilliant. The case was about whether felon disenfranchisement"—taking away the vote from prisoners—"fell under section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as a form of vote dilution or vote denial. Her short dissent said: This is a really easy case, and only becomes difficult if you try to make it that way. There were all these long opinions flying back and forth—Judge Cabranes in the majority, and Judge Parker in dissent, and Guido too. She had a short one that got it right.