This strikes me as a good description of President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court. Like all of us, I am still learning about Judge Sotomayor and have probably revised even those thoughts I expressed this morning on the Charlie Sykes show or those that you can see this evening on the six o’clock news on Channel 12 (in a “dueling” segment with Ed Fallone in which the “duel,” if there was one, mostly found the cutting room floor).

But I do believe that Obama’s selection contrasts sharply with those of President Bush and the differences are instructive and fodder for debate about the role of the judiciary. It isn’t that I am prepared to say that Judge Sotomayor is an extraordinarily liberal nominee (although she may be), but we can say that she has made at least one extraordinary statement. Although one should only let a single statement bear so much weight, we are, after all, blogging here and relative immediacy has its virtues.

In a lecture at Berkeley, she said the following: 

Amidst all of the press coverage of the Sotomayor nomination yesterday, WISN (Channel 12) ran an interesting story focusing on the reactions of Ed Fallone and Rick Esenberg.  The story highlighted Ed’s correct prediction of the Sotomayor nomination in a comment on this Blog on the very day Justice Souter announced his retirement.  (Have any good stock tips, Ed?) 

I also enjoyed reading the characteristically thoughtful commentary on Politico about Sotomayor by our former colleague Scott Moss.  His observation of gender bias in some of the criticisms of Sotomayor resonates with recent work by Andrea Schneider on gender roles in negotiation, which I plan to blog about later today.