Sonia Sotomayor and the 'Anti-Deposition'

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I was deposed in a lawsuit some years ago, a lawsuit of our own choosing with a high-priced lawyer of our own choosing. I was prepped all day the day before the deposition. The basic message was: Listen to the question and answer the question but no more than the question. Make the lawyers questioning you work, and they'll get tired and back off, leaving unsaid some things we might not want said because the question was never quite exactly and precisely asked.

You pick your moments to elaborate if the questioner has set up some point you want to make. You aren't always terse and on point, just *most* of the time.

I'd have to say Judge Sotomayor (as she should) is doing the opposite during her confirmation hearing. Explain, explain and explain some more. Use "context" a lot. Understand that many of the senators are reading from remarks prepared by staff, and that their follow up questions are also prepared. If your answers don't always seem to address the questions, neither will their follow ups if your answers are voluminous and nuanced enough.

Mostly stay calm. When these old crackers see a woman display any kind of emotion, they think:

rag fit

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She Will Not Place Biscuits in the Oven. She Has Placed Her Buns on the Bench and Not the Bed.

Borrowed from TPM who got it from the good gray Times. (Hey, I've been grading. Can't read every word in every issue.) Just telling us what we already knew.


"Some lawyers just don't like to be questioned by a woman. It was sexist, plain and simple." -- Judge Guido Calabresi, Judge Sotomayor's colleague on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, on suggestions that her tough questioning from the bench suggests a problem with her 'temperament.'


More more more unstable irony. Calling Wayne Booth. Calling Wayne Booth.