Obligatory Sotomayor Post

So it's Sotomayor. I admit I have little to say that at least three Volokh Conspirators haven't said already. Still, let me direct my few readers to David Lat's lively and entertaining profile of Sotomayor from back in the days when he was still moonlighting as Article III Groupie. For years, I confess I've mentally referred to Sotomayor as "Sonia from the Block."

Elsewhere, I have to say I don't find Obama's latest remarks on empathy heartening.I found the bit about "Now, in some ways it might cut the other way. I want a judge who has a sense of how regulations might affect the businesses in a practical way" discouraging. Does "the other way" mean that a judge who has empathy necessarily can't understand how regulations affect businesses? Or does he simply mean that (in contrast to the prior sentence) that businesses typically aren't the little guy, but it's helpful to understand the business perspective nonetheless? Of course, that Obama regards businesses in the aggregate as vastly more powerful than entrenched bureaucracies is itself revealing. Or is it mere syntactical sloppiness? Not that I blame him - a verbatim transcript of my day to day speech would look pretty embarassing, too.