Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor is environmental pragmatist

President Obama’s pick for the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, on May 26, 2009, turned out to be a real a real crowd pleaser in response to a desire for more diversity on the court panel.

Sotomayor had the experience, the scholastic credentials, and the humble life history that President Obama said he was looking for in a replacement for Judge David SouterDavid Souter. She was easily confirmed by a vote of 68-31, to make the 55 year old hispanic woman the newest Supreme Court Judge.

Sotomayor’s working-class father died when she was a child and her mother worked hard as a nurse to give her children educational opportunities. They lived in the Bronx and fought to elevate themselves academically and socially.

Ms. Sotomayor tells of walking past drug dealers on her way home from school. Later, she excelled at Princeton and Yale Law School. She has the knowledge and experience of a federal and appellate court judge and she has worked hard to better her position in life, without a lot of financial resources. Her upbringing and life story are similar to President Obama’s, which may have been a key factor in his choice.

Conservatives had turned over rocks to try and find some kind of dirt they could use to block her confirmation. There is a reference to her environmental record to make the accusation that she was too “liberal”, as if liberals are exclusively the only ones concerned about environmental issues. The reference relates to her ruling in the 2007 Riverkeeper v. EPA, in which an advocacy group questioned the EPA rule as it related to replacing antiquated fish-killing power plant water cooling systems.

Judge Sotomayor issued a ruling that declared the Clean Water Act did not give the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to do a cost-benefit analysis in planning to upgrade equipment based on the wording “best technology” , in relation to the cost of the technology. Sotomayor was going by the letter of the law, but the decision was seen as left-leaning.

In 2008, The ruling was over turned by a 3-1 vote in the Supreme Court, with Justice Scalia, who favors the letter of the law, forwarding the opinion that the EPA could use the cost analysis in its regulatory plans.

The ruling to over turn Sotomayor’s opinion “was considered a defeat for environmentalists and a victory for advocates of cost-benefit analysis,” said, Dan Farber, who is an environmental law expert at University of California, Berkley. “Although Scalia claims to believe in following statutory language to the letter, Sotomayor’s interpretation clearly was more faithful to the statute’s demand that EPA’s standards ‘reflect the best technology available for minimizing adverse environmental impact.”

“Judge Sotomayor is well-qualified in light of her personal, academic, legal and judicial experience,” said Glenn Sugameli, senior legislative counsel and head of Earthjustice’s judicial nominations projects. “Her knowledge, understanding and service, provide invaluable perspectives for deciding environmental protection and related issues.”

Sugameli also said in the New York Times: “Filling the current Supreme Court vacancy with a jurist who is fair-minded and experienced is critical. Polluters have attempted to rewrite the Constitution and laws to repeal clean air, clean water and other essential safeguards. Four of the remaining justices unjustifiably attempted to block the Clean Air Act’s application to global warming pollution and to reinterpret the Constitution to selectively prohibit citizen and state access to court in the 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA case.”

In response to a 2006 case, Connecticut v. American Electric Power Company, Inc., which argued that greenhouse gases amounted to nothing more than a public nuisance, Judge Sotomayer, was quoted as saying:

“I have absolutely no idea about the science of global warming, but if the science is right, we have relegated ourselves to killing the world in the foreseeable future. Not in centuries to come, but in the very near future.”

The choice of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for a place at the U.S. Supreme Court table, was a bold, forwarding thinking choice, to help form a more inclusive, sensible, open-minded, balanced, and diversified American legacy.

***Copyright DelilahStarling 2009