Supreme Court to Consider Sotomayor Dissent

While Judge Sonia Sotomayor's Second Circuit ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano undoubtedly will draw much attention at her Senate confirmation hearings, the United States Supreme Court today granted a writ of certiorari in Abbott v. Abbott, the case I discussed on June 1 in which the the Solicitor General of the United States, in an amicus brief urging the Court to grant a writ of certiorari, argued that Judge Sotomayor's reasoning in a dissenting opinion is the correct view of the law.

Abbott raises a question of the correct interpretation of an important clause of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects International Child Abduction. The federal circuit courts of appeals have divided on the question, and Judge Sotomayor dissented from the interpretation of the majority on the Second Circuit. Croll v, Croll, 229 F.3d 133.

In a case which brings up for review a decision of the Fifth Circuit, the Solicitor General argued that Judge Sotomayor's interpretation in Croll is correct, and that the Supreme Court should grant the writ of certiorari and adopt Judge Sotomayor's reasoning. See, Abbott v. Abbott.