Baby Clothes and Sonia Sotomayor

[TomClash]

A lawyer I know very well told a story about a case he had with Judge Sotomayor when she was a Federal District Court Judge. He had an "alternative lifestyle" client who had a small business selling baby clothes. The client received four containerized shipments a year from South Africa. In the spring of 1995, a container of baby clothes was sent from South Africa to NY and the container was discharged from the vessel. The client had a dispute with the shipper and the shipper refused to allow the port terminal to release the container to the client. Then the shipper told the ocean carrier to take the container from the terminal and put it on a vessel back to South Africa, which would have hurt the client's business severely.

So the client went to the lawyer. The lawyer applied for an order stopping the baby clothes from being sent back to SA and went to Judge Sotomayor to convince her to sign the order. She told him "this is a contract case - your client is not entitled to that kind of order." He told her "He is if it means he goes out of business." After much to and fro, she signed the Order and told him sternly, "Settle this dispute and don't come back." The dispute was settled, the baby clothes arrived and everyone was happy.

The moral of the story is that Sotomayor is a practical judge who gets the job done - her order gave the client and shipper time to resolve the dispute to everyone's satisfaction. She displayed the wisdom of Solomon, not the wisdom of Scalia, an impractical man who would have textualized the dispute to death.

Screw the phony "Wise Latina" controversy - this is the kind of judge the Supreme Court needs - someone who has fashioned the law in the real world. As far as I am concerned, we're lucky to have her.