Hot bench
The Second Circuit this week sent over the recordings — some of them previously unavailable — of four of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s most interesting cases, and I spend yesterday listening to them with an eye toward the “temperament” issue, and what it’s actually like to try a case in front of her.
The story — and the illustrative audio clips — are all here.
One thing I noticed: It’s not hard to figure out why Ricci and his lawyer, Karen Torre, aren’t fans, from listening to a hearing in which Sotomayor cut Torre off in her first sentence, as you can hear after about 50 seconds here.
In another memorable clip, she reduces to stammers the lawyer for a Chinese immigrant accused of forcing birth control on women, who needs to be rescued by one of her colleagues, Judge Rosemary Pooler.