Is the nitpicking worth the effort?

The fight continues. The right wing says Sotomayor doesn't understand the role of a judge; the left says that neither does Scalia. The right wing claims she's a reverse racist; the left claims so is Alito. Ok. Whatever.

I think we're going to have to accept that Sotomayor will be seated. Unless a background check turns up literal skeletons, there's not much about her that's objectionable. She's pretty lukewarm. The thing that concerns me most is that, while she seems to be competent at her job as a judge, both trial and appellate, she is by no means outstanding. She hasn't written anything groundbreaking, hasn't put forth an opinion that changed anything significantly. She hasn't written anything that would give us a clear picture of how she would decide future rulings.

What types of decisions will come to the Court in the future (or, rather, will they bring upon themselves, with their writs of certiorari)? Will she overturn Roe? Unlikely, but who knows?. What about Heller? I hope not. If Olson and Boies's suit gets to the Court, how would she decide? I don't know. I don't know how fruitful it is to speculate on any opinion she would give once she got there. Souter was nominated by Bush I, but he's consistently written more left opinions than right. Similarly, Blackmun, nominated by Nixon, was expected to be a strong conservative, but drifted more and more to the left during his tenure; he wrote the majority opinion for Roe. Her record thus far seems to be full of straight, quiet opinions, nothing brash, nothing that stands out. Who knows what'll happened when she's seated on the bench?