nationaljournal.com > The Ninth Justice

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has not defended her most widely criticized decision -- the one rejecting a discrimination lawsuit by 17 white firefighters, and one Hispanic, against the city of New Haven, Conn. -- as a just or fair result.

That would have been an uphill battle: Polls in June showed that huge majorities of the public wanted the Supreme Court to reverse Sotomayor's decision.

And as I've explained elsewhere, although the Supreme Court split 5-4 in ruling for the firefighters in Ricci v. DeStefano, all nine justices rejected the specific legal rule applied by Sotomayor's three-judge panel. That rule would allow employers to deny promotions after the fact to those who did best on any measure of...