My concern is that he will take the safe way each time a Court vacancy occurs, and for the same reasons — too many other challenges to face — so that we never will get someone “outside the judicial monastery”.

Constitutional decisions are of too great importance, and involve too many imponderables, to leave them exclusively to judges!

You make two important points: according to news reports, Sotomayer did very well in her personal interview with Obama, in part because of her personal narrative (or so we are told.) More importantly, as the Warren pick reminds us, once a justice is confirmed, presidents lose what little influence they have and all bets are off. Remember Souter, the stealth justice, proved to be a huge disappointment to Republicans despite being nominated by a Republican president. My guess is Sotomayer will prove to be an activist, liberal justice – more so than is indicated by her record. (She is also a Yankees fan, so has probably dabbled in steroids and the dark arts.) But first she needs to be confirmed – it will be interesting to see just how much ammunition the ideologically-oriented interest groups pour into this fight. My guess is that conservative groups will let this slide since her appointment doesn’t really change the balance of power on the court very much. They may be marshaling their resources for the next appointee… .

It is very interesting to see where all of the justices in the last 70 years came from – thank you for compiling this list. Taking a cursory look at which Presidents appointed which justices, I am reminded that although we tend to see the Court as pretty easily divided into two separate ideological camps, a considerable number of liberal justices have been appointed by Republican Presidents – Chief Justice Earl Warren being among the most important examples.

An interesting part of the Sotomayor nomination is that she and Obama share very similar personal narratives (raised be a single mom, immigrant roots, education). I wonder whether that helped Sotomayor when she sat down to interview with Obama.