In a July 1 column, syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell asserts of Judge Sonia Sotomayor: “Performance matters. And Judge Sotomayor's performance provides no reason for putting her on the Supreme Court.” Sowell then asserts:

Although the case of the Connecticut firefighters is the latest and best-known of Judge Sotomayor's reversals by the Supreme Court, an even more revealing case was Didden v. Village of Port Chester, where the Supreme Court openly rebuked the unanimous three-judge panel that included Judge Sotomayor for “an evident denial of the most elementary forms of procedural due process.”

But Sowell's attack on Sotomayor's “performance” falls flat. While it is not unusual for the Supreme Court to reverse federal appellate court decisions, the Supreme Court did not reverse Sotomayor in Didden, as Judith Schaeffer and Mike Sacks noted in a post on the Constitutional Accountability Center's Text and History blog. Indeed, the Court refused to hear the appeal of the opinion Sotomayor joined.

Sowell's quote can actually be found in a brief by several law professors urging the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the case.