The president has named Second Circuit Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. The “smart money” had been on Seventh Circuit Judge Diane Wood whose association with the president at the University of Chicago Law School and whose intellectual muscle had some, like Jan Greenburg Crawford, calling her a “dream” pick.

But if you accept the view that nearly everything in this administration is politically driven Sotomayor makes sense. She will be acclaimed as a “breakthrough” pick and will be to some degree a harder target for senators who are always looking over their shoulders for criticism of their “insensitivity.”

Sotomayor has been roundly criticized on a number of fronts — her intellect, her frank declaration that the courts are for policy making, her high reversal rate, and her views that this “divvying up by race” is not only allowed but required by the Constitution. The issue is not whether she will be confirmed but what this will tell us about two starkly competing judicial philosophies. Americans are about to get a tutorial in judicial activism and we will see how popular it actually is. One final note: As Ed Whelan has detailed, Wood has taken some rather extreme positions on the war on terror, doubting there even is one and disparaging any sort of military tribunals. That might have been the last thing Obama wanted or needed right now.