Heads Or Tails

In his response to Jeffrey Rosen's critique of Sonia Sotomayor, Jacob Sullum concludes:

Sotomayor is not only a mixed bag from a libertarian point of view; according to Rosen, she is all over the map methodologically. After six years as a trial judge and 11 years on the 2nd Circuit, Rosen writes, 'Sotomayor still hasn't settled on a consistent judicial philosophy....She samples from different judicial philosophies in different cases. Sometimes Sotomayor sounds like a textualist in the Scalia style, and sometimes she sounds as enthusiastic as Justices Ginsburg and Breyer in her devotion to international law and the living constitution.' This inconsistency is not exactly encouraging, but even if Sotomayor chooses sides by flipping a coin she might still turn out better (or at least no worse) than David Souter, and Obama easily could have chosen someone more consistently bad.

This is one area where Obama's vaunted pragmatism seems to have come through. I only wish he showed more of it on the economy and health care, as well.