There's a very short slice of a speech that Judge Sotomayor gave in February 2005 at Duke making the rounds on the internet, in which she says something that some people think is scary, like the court of appeals is "where policy is made." Digging pretty deep for this criticism, it seems to me.
I was curious about the context, so I went looking for the entire speech. Here's a link to the entire fifty minute panel, moderated by Erwin Chemerinsky, with Judges Sotomayor, Henry, and Lucero. The panel is speaking about clerkships. As you'd expect, the thirty second clip making the rounds on the internet doesn't tell the full story. Heck, it doesn't even tell a significant part of the story.
Judge Sotomayor speaks in response to a student's question about the difference between the work of clerking for a district court and clerking for a court of appeals. (At least that seems to be what the student's asking--the audio's hard to make out.) The question is at about minute 40. Judge Sotomayor's response begins at about 43:20. The judge is speaking about the importance of courts of appeals. She says the courts of appeals are the places "where the law is percolating" and they are concerned with "the application of the law" and "how the law is developing." She also says, "so you're always thinking about the ramifications of this ruling on the next step in the development of the law." Not much hay to be made out of this.
As I've seen in the past, when you know the full story it's a lot less exciting (and scary) than when you know only a small piece of it.
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