“Wise Latina” : Sotomayor on Immigration

In seeking to understand how Sonia Sotomayor will handle immigration-related cases that come before the Supreme Court, the decisions Sotomayor has actually authored are paramount. There are many cases in which Sotomayor was on the panel of judges that heard the case, but did not actually author the decision. Those cases don’t tell us very much about how she thinks. Therefore, I conducted a Westlaw search designed to retrieve only immigration-related opinions authored by Sotomayor.

In immigration cases, generally the government is the one that is trying to deport the alien, while the alien is trying to remain in the United States. In her judicial career, Sotomayor has authored opinions in 42 immigration-related cases. In 22 of these cases, Sotomayor ruled for the government, yielding a win rate of 53%. However, her record since September 11, 2001 runs decidedly against the government. Out of 29 cases she ruled only 9 times for the government, or 31% of the time. I did not have time to read all of Sotomayor’s immigration-related opinions. I read about half of them, and found problems with the reasoning or her interpretation of the law in 4 of the cases. In this blog, I will cover only 1 case. There may be future blogs exploring the other 3 cases.