Supreme Court Shoo-In?

She meets all the politically correct qualifications the Obama administration is seeking in its first Supreme Court nominee. As a woman, Sonia Sotomayor would help balance the court's lopsided 8-1 gender scale. As a Latina, she would give Hispanics long-overdue representation on our highest court. As a Bronx, N.Y., native and product of a single-parent home, she has the real-life experiences that President Barack Obama considers necessary.

As a sitting federal judge who has been nominated by both Republican and Democratic administrations, she could be a shoo-in when she seeks Senate confirmation. As a child of the projects who got to study at Princeton and Yale and became a successful career woman, she would become a huge role model. As a left-of-center jurist on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan, she probably meets all the litmus tests the Democrats deny they will apply when searching to replace retiring Justice David Souter.

But do those assets alone qualify her to be a Supreme Court justice? Of course not! They are just the icing on the cake!

"She also happens to be brilliant," insisted one of my lawyer friends, who called me from Washington. His unexpected wake-up call is part of a growing outcry for President Obama to "do the right thing" and nominate Sotomayor, not only because the time has come for the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice but also because even without many of her aforementioned attributes, she still would be on everyone's shortlist of jurists who could be nominated by a Democratic president.

"Her reasoning, her decisions, her suggestions tell me that she has one of the best legal minds in the country," my friend added as he lobbied for me to write a column about Sotomayor.

Coming from this friend, who happens to be a Republican and never even has met Sotomayor, this was an impressive endorsement. "She may be left-leaning," he added. "But she is so brilliant that I can live with it."

My friend, a Hispanic lawyer who follows the Supreme Court almost as closely as he follows Major League Baseball, bases his admiration of Sotomayor on the judge's role — a sitting federal district judge in New York — in ending the 1995 baseball strike.

In an e-mail he sent me to back his phone call, my friend argued that Sotomayor's brilliant reasoning "not only terminally demolished the owners' legal case, but their eventual compliance with the parameters she set therein led directly to the recent financial popularity of baseball, until the present recession.

My friend and others argue that Sotomayor's brilliant thinking on the critical and unresolved social issues of our time eventually could become as influential as that of past Supreme Court icons. Those who are lobbying for Sotomayor, especially through e-mail and blogs, argue that as a former constitutional law professor, Obama has no excuse for bypassing their candidate. Never mind the fact that the high court could use a little more Hispanic and feminine perspective; just based on merit, they say, she should get the nod.

In a press briefing Monday, when White House press secretary Robert Gibbs described the qualifications the administration is seeking from potential nominees, he said, "Excellence, somebody with a record of integrity, somebody who understands the rule of law, and somebody who understands how being a judge affects Americans' everyday lives." Sotomayor's many supporters were picturing her face.

Because Sotomayor was appointed to a federal court in Manhattan by a Republican, George H.W. Bush, in 1992, and elevated to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals by a Democrat, Bill Clinton, in 1998, her supporters say that her almost-certain Senate confirmation could be one fewer headache for the Obama administration.

Her political standing, her qualifications and her record as a jurist already rank her among the best. But given the current composition of the Supreme Court, the fact that she is a Latina makes her even better.

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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