Next week, as children head back to schools across the country, the rituals of Fall will provide continuity and comfort to millions. Students will come eager to share their most vivid summer adventures. Teachers will work to project equal amounts of authority, competence, and warmth. Parents will dispense, one more...

President Obama's nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is inviting glossy-eyed "only in America" commentary domestically and throughout the world. But as the likely confirmation storm gathers force, biography will surely be pitted against ideology. To her opponents Judge Sotomayor's judicial philosophy -- particularly her flirtation with...