Judging justices, Catholic and otherwise

When Samuel Alito was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Bush in 2005, there was a great and frequently uncivil hoo-rah to the effect that Alito would give the Supremes a “Catholic majority.” In this case, “Catholic” was code for “anti-Roe v. Wade”—and if you doubt that, consider that there was precious little noise out of the folks who fretted about Alito and the Catholic “majority” when President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor, of Puerto Rican and Catholic ancestry, to fill the slot on the Court being vacated by Justice David Souter.Read more