Double Standards

Stuart Taylor, on a Republican nominee:

Alito’s critics have similarly ignored much evidence that his 15 years of steady, scholarly, precedent-respecting work as a judge tell us more about him than a handful of widely (and misleadingly) publicized memos that he wrote more than 20 years ago.

On a Democratic nominee:

And some may see Sotomayor’s [innocuous] letter [written as an undergraduate] as evidence that she was predisposed to look for the worst, not the best, in the institution that had afforded her such opportunities. She now sits on Princeton’s Board of Trustees.

So, if I understand correctly, memos Alito wrote directly about important constitutional issues while applying for an important government job should be disregarded, but letters that Sotomayor wrote as a student are somehow important despite their utter lack of relevance to any discernible constitutional issue. And I must have missed Taylor’s series of posts giving Sotomayor’s opinions the most moderate possible reading. But I’m sure he has deeply principled reasons for all this!

And note the additional hackery — to say that a circuit court judge is “respectful of precedent” is non responsive to the well-supported argument that Alito was doctrinaire conservative, both because how a judge interprets ambiguous legal materials is more important and because when elevated to the Supreme Court Alito wouldn’t be bound by precedent. (Alito has, of course, been exactly the completely doctrinaire reactionary the Bush administration expected when it picked him, because that’s what all the evidence suggested.) Strange, though — I haven’t seen Taylor even try to argue that the one case he’s ever cited to defend his proposition that Sotomayor is some kind of left-wing radical was inconsistent with 2nd Circuit precedent. Must be an oversight…