In the Netherlands, new members of the Supreme Court are not nominated or appointed by the prime-minister, but by a - I would say pretty low-key - process of nomination and appointment by ultimately the cabinet, in which parliament is also involved. In essence, one could say that the ultimate appointment is in reality heavily influenced by the internal nomination at Supreme Court level, with which the whole procedure begins (see for a summary here).
Things are different in the US, where the President is the man in charge as to nominations for the Supreme Court of the US (a.k.a. SCOTUS), that typically draw a lot of media attention, no doubt also because of the political dimension that is lacking on this side of the Atlantic. The recent nomination by President Obama of Judge Sonia Sotomayor is no exception. For some nice examples of writings in the blogosphere see here, here, here, here, here and here.
Many of these posts focus on the cases handled by Judge Sotomayor and her reversal rates as appellate judge. As to her securities law record, an instructive - and pretty positive - update by Christine Hurt can be found here. The results from "the full data set" are also available and can be found here. Enjoy.
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