Experts: Sotomayor's rulings may overreach

WASHINGTON, July 9 (UPI) -- Analysts combing U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's record say they're divided on whether her rulings overstepped the role of an appellate judge.

Some legal experts said Sotomayor's rulings are within the realm of decisions issued by Democratic-appointed judges, The Washington Post said. But others criticized her style as close to crossing the line for delving into lower court records when appellate judges typically defer to judges and juries.

In examining the record of Sotomayor, whose confirmation hearings in the Senate start Monday, the Post reviewed all 46 of her cases in which the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a divided ruling.

The newspaper compared Sotomayor's votes in split cases with those of other judges through a random sample of 5,400 cases in a data base. The data base's creator, University of South Carolina political scientist Donal Songer, said he coded decisions as "liberal" or "conservative" based on common definitions.

Sotomayor's votes came out liberal 59 percent of the time, compared with 52 percent for other judges who were appointed by Democratic presidents, the Post analysis indicated.

Adrienne Wisenberg, a criminal appellate lawyer in Washington, said appellate judges "are not in the role of reweighing the credibility of a witness. Someone's demeanor is not reflected on a transcript."

However, Dan Himmelfarb, a former clerk to conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told the Post Sotomayor is "extraordinarily thorough, and a judge would ordinarily be praised for writing thorough opinions."