Conservative Columnist Invents Supreme Court Ruling to Attack Sotomayor

[Updated below]

In a piece here in today's National Review Online, Thomas Sowell, a prominent conservative columnist, attacks Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for what he claims is poor performance as a judge on her part because, by his count, the Supreme Court has reversed four of six Second Circuit cases in which Judge Sotomayor took part. Never mind that the Supreme Court has not deemed it necessary to review the overwhelming majority of the thousands of cases in which Judge Sotomayor has participated, or the fact that the Supreme Court reverses rather than affirms more of the cases that it does hear, or that Samuel Alito's score card before the Supreme Court as an appellate judge was pretty similar to Sotomayor's when he was nominated and confirmed to the High Court.

No, the biggest whopper in Sowell's piece is this paragraph:

Although the case of the Connecticut firefighters [Ricci] is the latest and best-known of Judge Sotomayor's reversals by the Supreme Court, an even more revealing case was Didden v. Village of Port Chester, where the Supreme Court openly rebuked the unanimous three-judge panel that included Judge Sotomayor for "an evident denial of the most elementary forms of procedural due process."

Too bad Sowell didn't actually read about the Didden case or otherwise do his homework before he put his poison pen to work, or he'd have known that the Supreme Court never heard the Didden case at all, let alone "rebuked" the Second Circuit panel that Judge Sotomayor was on.

In fact, the "rebuke" language that Sowell quotes comes not from any Supreme Court ruling, or any court ruling at all, but from an amicus brief filed by law professor Richard Epstein and others asking the Supreme Court to grant certiorari and review the Didden case, a request that the Court denied without recorded dissent. (Epstein's brief is here; the quoted language is at the bottom of page 14.)

Ironically, in attacking Judge Sotomayor, Sowell states that "[q]ualifications are not simply a question of how long you have been doing something, but how well you have done it." Today, Thomas Sowell did not do well at all.

Co-authored with Mike Sacks and originally posted at Text & History.

Update 7/1/09 2:38pm: Earlier in the day CAC contacted National Review Online to let them know about this error. Its editors have now added a correction regarding Sowell's piece. However, the original erroneous version was widely syndicated this morning and is still available on many sites, including here, here, and here. CAC maintains that it is Mr. Sowell's responsibility to identify and contact all these sites and have his mistake corrected or removed.]

Comments

[MWChris]

Thomas Sowell's op-ed pieces are nothing more than bald opinions. He rarely backs up anything or provides any analysis worthy of his PhD.

[Gidster]

Since when have the facts in evidence ever stood in the way of a right wing smear job?

[jsgaetano]

Honestly, facts are a burden to them.

If you deal in the reality-based community, you are limitted to what actually happens.

If you operate in Southern Wingnuttia... the sky is the limit! You can simply make up facts, statistics, events, anecdotes, etc, to fit whatever conservative-based reality you need to create that minute.

[Gidster]

We see it every day on FOX News and hear it every day on AM radio......

[jhamm1]

Is Sowell a graduate from Harvard's political science program? That might explain his propensity for falsifying quotations, which Harvard political scientists are known to do on a regular basis.

[damilitantone]

Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams make their bones being black ultra-right conservatives. Given any topic I can predict almost without error what their positions are before they voice them. The least Sowell can do is to be accurate in his views and opinions.

[RobinSeattle]

Republicans aren't the only ones making stuff up. Loretta Sanchez told a fib in order to take a cheap shot at a teenage relative or Richard Nixon's:
http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/gunkist-memories/loretta-story-for-the-future-d/

[JoeSausage]

What? A conservative columnist who lies to make his case? I've never heard of such a thing!

[TheCommons]

And don't forget, he's equally talented as an economist. What a guy!

[robert234]

Sowell is a right wing fanatic even the use of waterboarding would not coerce him to recant or apologize. Journalists like him NEVER seek truth, only agendas.