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Documents Show Sotomayor Is Mainstream

(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has in the course of her long career compiled a massive public record. She has written or spoken millions of words on what are by definition some of the most contentious issues of our time. She appears to have eaten enough rubber chicken to start her own KFC. And she has evidently schlepped to more sonorous law-related events than any person in their right mind would schlep to over the course of even the longest career. If this High Court thing doesn't work out for her she should make a pitch to Red Bull to become its spokeswoman.

So it should come as no surprise that there were few surprises today in the completed questionnaire distributed to the Senate Judiciary Committee by the White House's confirmation-hearing panel of hacks and tribunes. The first thing to say about the massive document dump is that Judge Sotomayor has an extensive mainstream record in the law that is marked by a few controversial moments of expressed thought. If this is enough to preclude her ascension to the Supreme Court as its third woman and first Latina then judges all over the country will be coming up with excuses to miss their next bar association invite.

We now know from the documents that Judge Sotomayor's now famous "wise Latina" remark in 2005 was a variation on a consistent theme that she had expressed on several earlier occasions. Of all the times she returned to the theme of women as judges, her Andrew Cohen is CBS News' Chief Legal Analyst and Legal Editor. CourtWatch is his new blog with analysis and commentary on breaking legal news and events. For columns on legal issues before the beginning of this blog, click here.

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