The vote of the Court’s newest justice on that issue, however, may be more predictable.

Although the issue in the case was originally relatively narrow — whether an “on-demand” video ought to be subject to the same restrictions as broadcast campaign advertising — the Supreme Court has asked both sides to re-argue the case next week, to answer a far more controversial and significant question: should the Court reverse its previous restrictions on corporate campaign financing on First Amendment grounds?

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, once a lawyer on New York City’s Campaign Finance Board who implemented campaign finance restrictions, isn’t likely to vote in favor of reversing those longstanding federal restrictions on corporate spending. She’s written in favor of restricting corporate spending on campaigns, such as in this law review article, where she wrote:

We would never condone private gifts to judges about to decide a case implicating the gift-givers’ interests. Yet our system of election financing permits extensive private, including corporate, financing of candidates’ campaigns, raising again and again the question what the difference is between contributions and bribes and how legislators or other officials can operate objectively on behalf of the electorate. Can elected officials say with credibility that they are carrying out the mandate of a “democratic” society, representing only the general public good, when private money plays such a large role in their campaigns?

In the one campaign finance matter that confronted her as a judge on the Second Circuit, Sotomayor voted to allow a Vermont campaign finance spending limit to stand, although her vote was based on a procedural issue, not the merits of the law. The Supreme Court eventually overturned the Vermont restrictions.

Of course, Justice David Souter, whom Sotomayor replaced, generally favored restrictions on corporate campaign spending as well, so Sotomayor’s position isn’t likely to swing the court in a different direction.

Justice Samuel Alito, Jr. and Chief Justice John Roberts, however, are skeptics of campaign finance regulations and could lead the court’s conservative wing toward tossing out longstanding laws restricting corporate spending on political campaigns. The conservatives on the court — oddly joined by the ACLU — see such rules as restrictions on freedom of speech.

This excerpt below (I’ve omitted the citations) explains how the majority’s “conservatism” in this case became just a form of backwardness:

There is no denying that the Court is correct when it notes that a claim of right to DNA testing, post-trial at that, is a novel one, but that only reflects the relative novelty of testing DNA, and in any event is not a sufficient reason alone to reject the right asserted. Tradition is of course one serious consideration in judging whether a challenged rule or practice, or the failure to provide a new one, should be seen as violating the guarantee of substantive due process as being arbitrary, or as falling wholly outside the realm of reasonable governmental action. We recognize the value and lessons of continuity with the past, but as Justice Harlan pointed out, society finds reasons to modify some of its traditional practices, and the accumulation of new empirical knowledge can turn yesterday’s reasonable range of the government’s options into a due process anomaly over time.

It’s been said that Souter’s influence on the court has been limited because he doesn’t espouse grand theories or writing particularly memorable, quoteworthy passages. But that’s also been his strength, as it’s allowed him to convey clearly and simply what he believes the constitution requires, unclouded by the desire to impress or advance an ideological agenda.

Although these things are always hard to predict, Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor would appear to be a similar sort of justice — not particularly ideological, not flashy, but careful and open to the notion that interpretations of the constitution must progress along with advances in science and ethical mores.

To be sure, she’s been criticized for having denied a prisoner, Mark Descovic, the right to test DNA evidence after he was wrongly convicted of rape and murder, simply because his lawyer’s request came four days late. Not the most “empathetic” ruling, but then, the jury already knew Descovic’s DNA didn’t match that of the semen found in the victim; he was convicted based on his apparently coerced confession. He was eventually freed in 2006.

That’s the sort of ruling that could disappoint liberals who might think that fairness ought to have taken precedence over finality. As I’ve noted, Sotomayor’s prosecutorial background sometimes makes her a stickler for following the letter of the law rather than its spirit.

Still, one would hope that she, or any new justice, would be prepared to balance the values of continuity with progress in much the same way that  Souter did — or tried to — last week. To tip the balance on the court, however, that new justice will also have to be extraordinarily persuasive.

She also tossed in this tidbit of information sure to interest anyone following the contentious Sotomayor nomination:  The controversial reverse discrimination case Sotomayor participated in as an appellate court judge, Ricci v. DeStefano, may not be decided in June, as had been widely expected.  Instead, the case, “one can safely predict, will be among the last to come out before the term ends,” said Ginsburg.

To be sure, that doesn’t tell us much. Although the term officially ends in late September, the court has been expected to issue its decisions by the end of June, before the court takes off for its summer recess, because Souter made clear he’s not staying past the end of this term. A new justice needs to be confirmed, move to Washington and hire new law clerks to be prepared to begin hearing cases in early October.

Some Republicans, however, have argued that they need more time to review Sotomayor’s voluminous record of court decisions — though many Democrats speculate that they really just want to wait for the court to decide the Ricci case, in the hopes of a reversal that they’ll then use against her.

The characteristically careful wording of Ginsburg’s statement hasn’t stopped the speculation that something nefarious is going on, though. Already, Sotomayor opponents are seizing on Ginsburg’s comment to resume the argument to delay Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings until September. They’re currently scheduled to begin July 13.

As William Jacobson, at Legal Insurrection, writes:

I have suspected that one of the reasons the Obama administration wants to rush the Sotomayor confirmation hearings through in mid-July is to avoid the serious political damage to Sotomayor’s confirmation of a reversal on Ricci. Ginsburg’s statements seem to support this wisdom, from the Obama administration’s point of view, since the Ricci decision appears to be headed for release after mid-July. [added] Normally the Court would render its decisions by the end of June, which makes it curious that Ginsburg would emphasize that the Ricci decision would be one of the last decisions released. We’ll see in the next couple of weeks whether the Ricci decision takes place on the normal timetable.

Ginsburg’s statements should give everyone pause as to the timing of the confirmation hearings. The possibility of a reversal on Ricci being held back (whether intentionally or not) until after the confirmation hearings argues for a September confirmation schedule.

The Wall Street Journal reports today:

New York criminal-defense lawyers say she is surprisingly tough on crime for a Democratic-backed appointee — a byproduct, they believe, of her tenure as a prosecutor.

Makes sense. She may also have been influenced by growing up in a poor and crime-ridden neighborhood in the Bronx. Whatever the reason, she could push the Supreme Court rightward in its rulings on rights of criminal defendants.

As the Journal’s Jess Bravin and Nathan Koppell write:

The Supreme Court’s five conservatives in January held that it was acceptable for prosecutors to use evidence seized by police who mistakenly thought they had a warrant to arrest a suspect.

Justice David Souter dissented, as did the other liberals on the court. But Judge Sotomayor, nominated to succeed Justice Souter, ruled in favor of the police in a similar case 10 years ago. In that case, the judge upheld an arrest and search that never would have happened if police and court officials had kept accurate records.

While it’s impossible to know how she would rule if a case like that came before her today, it does suggest a conservatism on an important issue that until now has been largely overlooked.

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[U]nless Sotomayor believes that Latina women also make better judges than Latino men, and also better than African-American men and women, her basic proposition seems to be that white males (with some exceptions, she noted) are inferior to all other groups in the qualities that make for a good jurist.

Any prominent white male would be instantly and properly banished from polite society as a racist and a sexist for making an analogous claim of ethnic and gender superiority or inferiority.

Conservatives have been confident that Sotomayor’s views on diversity and affirmative action are out of the mainstream and can be used to expose her as a radical. Nonetheless, imagine Taylor’s words in the mouth of, say, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), and you see the aesthetic difficulty that Republicans could have here. Voters may not like the idea of unqualified minorities taking their jobs, but what would they think of a bench of white, male Republicans hectoring a Hispanic woman about her views of white men?

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A Denver federal judge who grew up in southern Colorado confirms she could be under consideration for nomination to the Supreme Court, the Pueblo Chieftain reports. U.S. District Court Judge Christine Arguello, named to the bench last fall, tops a list of potential dark horse nominees to replace retiring Justice David Souter, The Colorado Independent noted Sunday. [...]

Arguello, a 1977 graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder and 1980 graduate of Harvard Law School, was managing senior associate counsel at the CU-Boulder before being named a federal judge by President George W. Bush. Arguello was a former deputy Colorado attorney general to Democrat Ken Salazar, who supported her nomination to the bench last year when he was still a senator. Former Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican, also backed Arguello.

The Associated Press notes that Arguello is the federal judge presiding over a First Amendment lawsuit filed by a Denver man who says the Secret Service abridged his free speech rights when he approached then-Vice President Dick Cheney in Beaver Creek in 2006. Officers arrested Steven Howards after he “lightly” touched Cheney at a conservative conference and told him the administration’s policy in Iraq was “disgusting.”

Luning notes that Arguello is the first Hispanic judge on the U.S. District Court for Colorado. Marc Ambinder reported yesterday that President Obama will likely announce his pick next week.

Ed Brayton of TWI’s sister site, The Michigan Messenger, has the details.

Hillary Clinton, Obama’s surprise choice for secretary of state, has been mooted as a wild card appointment to the Supreme Court, but she would have to abandon any remaining presidential ambitions – an unlikely prospect.

First, who has seriously proposed Clinton for the SCOTUS job? She’s 61 years old, and the liberal consensus is to find a younger, less politically charged nominee who can spend decades on the court. Second, who says that Clinton, who will be 69 on Election Day 2016, is thinking about another presidential bid? Not many people right now. But enough to make it into an article that gets linked by Drudge and read in the United States and kicks off speculation …

Substantial questions also persist regarding Judge Sotomayor’s temperament and disposition to be a Supreme Court justice. Lawyers who have appeared before her have described her as a “bully” who “does not have a very good temperament,” and who “abuses lawyers” with “inappropriate outbursts.”

Pretty convincing! Republicans that I know are pretty annoyed that they might not have any momentum in a SCOTUS fight against a president so liberal that he voted against Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito, but thus far they’ve spent too much time fantasizing about a Sotomayor meltdown or a weird theory that Sen. Arlen Specter’s (D-Pa.) party switch has somehow empowered the 40-member GOP Senate conference to block judicial nominees.