Barack Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor is a good example of how Presidents make Supreme Court appointments: they balance political constituencies they wish to favor or reward and the predicted ease or difficulty of confirmation with their desire to have jurists who will cooperate with their policy initiatives.Sotomayor will be the first Hispanic to serve on the Supreme Court if one does not count Benjamin Cardozo, a Sephardic Jew whose great-grandfather, Abraham Nunez… [read post]

  Two circuits - the Third and Seventh - reached a contrary result, but the Seventh Circuit in Nunez v. [read post]