I don't have much to add on the italicized response. If you want me to comment on them, I guess I'd say that the blunt method wasn't too well-received. (Personally when I feel someone hasn't done enough research, I generally politely point them to some reading material).
Fair enough.
What I responded to the second time was your statement "mc: you don't have enough information to make such a claim, because you are lacking exact information", to which I responded "actually, I did have enough information to make such a claim, because mathematically I only require inexact information."
But I thought you said you were making the point that such variables cannot be used as proof of authority or qualification.....
Whatever, it doesn't really matter.
This is based on other judges citing your decisions and the like, so a mechanical and "fair" standard if a sometimes misleading one.
Looks like Easterbrook and Posner pretty well dominated that original study...no big surprise there. Not that the study is flawless, looking at citations and such is good for looking at breadth of work but not necessarily depth. It's also interesting to see how high Alito was on the list of "individuality."
Sotomayor's new problem, other than Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove calling her a racist, which is too pathetically silly to bother with: not empathetic enough.
Uh...yeah, that sort of accusation is pretty foolish. If a judge mechanically applies the law without empathy, and the result is an injustice, this is usually a good sign that the original law was poorly written and needs to be addressed by the legislature and has a decent chance of spurring a legislative change. See, e.g., the discrimination case Miki linked to quite awhile back--I forget the name offhand--or multiple state legislatures revising their laws to specifically deny
Kelo style takings after
Kelo was decided.
Ignoring the letter of the law to obtain a "fair" result means that the law is not being challenged in some form, which make it less likely that said poor law will be around antagonizing society as a whole.
EDIT:
Okay, first of all, I thought reading the opinions of courts reviewing her work was recognizing the importance of peer review.
Yeah, that was my fault. I was rushing through stuff last night and your comma threw me off; I skipped over everything after it in that one sentence. To answer your question, yes, judicial opinions of appellate cases are peer review. Not only over cases that they are directly ruling on, but they can comment on the rulings made in other jurisdictions as well.
That said, if you are considering the Supreme Courts opinions over her cases, then by default you must have some respect for the Supreme Court's authority over her. To this, I question again why is there a debate between us?
