An editorial in today’s Washington Times accuses Judge Sotomayor of being unwilling “to provide more reasoning than a few hundred words for controversial cases in which the public clearly sides against [her] position.” Citing four cases in which Sotomayor handed down a short dissenting opinion or a brief unpublished order, the editorial claims that she is “dismissive[] when ruling against individual weapons rights, property rights and the employment rights of white firefighters and against a state’s traditional authority to prohibit currently imprisoned felons from voting.”

This editorial, however, reveals far more about the ignorance of the Washington Times‘ editorial board than it does about Sotomayor. The overwhelming majority of federal appeals are resolved by a brief unpublished order–Tom Goldstein’s seminal study on Sotomayor’s race cases, for example, found that her court published a decision in only 5 of 55 decisions affirming a district court’s decision. Lengthy published opinions are rare, not because judges are “dismissive,” but because their use is reserved to groundbreaking decisions that resolve previously unresolved questions of law. Yet, according to research compiled by The Wonk Room, each of the four decisions cited by the Washington Times, did nothing more than follow well-established law:

• The Second Amendment: Last year, the Supreme Court held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. But another Supreme Court decision, which has never been overruled, held that the Second Amendment does not apply to state laws. So, in Sotomayor’s decision upholding a New York State ban on nunchaku, she did nothing more than recognize that only the Supreme Court has the “prerogative of overruling its own decisions.”

• Property Rights: In 1999, two developers learned that their land was part of a “redevelopment zone” and subject to seizure by eminent domain. Yet the developers waited until 2004 to file suit–two years after the three year statute of limitations had expired. Sotomayor’s decision held simply that land developers cannot wait forever to file a claim, just like everyone else.

• White Firefighters: In her now-famous Ricci decision, Judge Sotomayor held that an employer could decide not to certify the results of a promotion test that had an adverse impact on minorities. In 1984, eight years before Sotomayor became a judge, her court decided a virtually identical case called Bushey v. New York State Civil Service Commission, and it reached exactly the same result. So Sotomayor simply followed the binding precedent established by Bushey, which has never been overruled.

• Felony Disenfranchisement: Bizarrely, the Washington Times lumps Sotomayor’s published dissent in Hayden v. Pataki together with the other cases on this list as an example of her “dismissive approach.” Although Sotomayor’s dissent in Hayden was brief, she also joined a 32-page dissent by George W. Bush appointee Barrington Parker–judges frequently join the opinion of another judge that they agree with rather than waste effort repeating what has already been said. Moreover, Sotomayor’s dissent in Hayden rejected the majority’s claim that they could invent an exception to the Voting Rights Act which does not exist in the text of that law. Sotomayor thought that Congress gets to decide what the law says, a majority of her colleagues thought that they knew better than Congress.

In the end, we can either live in Judge Sotomayor’s world, a world where judges follow the law, or we can live in the Washington Times‘ world, where the law must take a backseat to whatever is popular.

Fresh off arguing that GOP senators should “stand up for the white working class” by obstructing Judge Sotomayor, Pat Buchanan accused Sotomayor on MSNBC yesterday of “insanity” because “she tried to overturn a law in New York State which prohibits felons from being allowed to vote who are in the penitentiary.” Watch it:

Buchanan’s attack echoes a claim by the conservative Washington Times that “[t]here is growing evidence that Judge Sotomayor believes some races are more equal than others,” in part because Sotomayor voted to allow a challenge to New York’s felony disenfranchisement law to move forward:

In Hayden v. Pataki, a number of inmates in New York state filed suit claiming that because blacks and Latinos make up a disproportionate share of the prison population, the state’s refusal to allow them ballot access amounts to an unlawful, race-based denial of their right to vote. [...]

Yet, operating on a dubious and extremely broad reading of the Voting Rights Act, Ms. Sotomayor dissented from the decision. In a remarkably dismissive, four-paragraph opinion, she alleged that the “plain terms” of the Voting Rights Act would allow such race-based claims to go forward.

These attacks misrepresent Sotomayor’s decision. First of all, Sotomayor did not “tr[y] to overturn” anything. The majority in Hayden voted to toss several inmates out of court before they could be given a trial to determine whether New York engages in race discrimination. Judge Sotomayor’s dissent—and the 20 page dissent by Judge Parker which Sotomayor joined—said nothing about whether New York violated the Voting Rights Act; the dissents merely argued that the inmates should be given the opportunity to prove their discrimination claims at trial.

More importantly, Judge Sotomayor based her dissent, not on the notion that “some races are more equal than others,” but instead on the radical notion that judges should follow the law as it is written.

The plaintiffs in Hayden claimed that New York systematically discriminates against people of color by incarcerating them at higher rates than white New Yorkers. Although only 31% of New Yorkers are racial minorities, the plaintiffs claimed that 86% of the prison population are non-white. Moreover, the Voting Rights Act provides that no state may impose any voting restriction which sorts its citizens by race:

No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision in a manner which results in a denial or abridgement of the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color . . . .

In a case called Chisom v. Roemer, the Supreme Court held that a state law violates the Voting Rights Act even if it unintentionally causes people to lose their right to vote on account their skin color. So if New York actually does systematically disenfranchise minorities by overincarcerating them, the Voting Rights Act forbids New York from continuing this practice.

Nevertheless, a majority of the court held that felony disenfranchisement laws are immune to scrutiny under the Act. Essentially, the court said that Congress did not really mean it when it enacted a law providing that “no voting qualification” may discriminate.

This is why Sotomayor dissented from the majority’s decision. As she explained in dissent, “[t]he duty of a judge is to follow the law, not to question its plain terms. I do not believe that Congress wishes us to disregard the plain language of any statute or to invent exceptions to the statutes it has created.” This textualist approach to the law is exactly the same approach advocated by conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Judge Sotomayor did nothing more than insist that judges cannot second-guess Congress—by its express terms, the Voting Rights Act applies to felony disenfranchisement laws. Perhaps this explains why 19 state governors, including conservatives like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and then-Texas Governor George W. Bush “have either restored voting rights to people in the criminal justice system or eased the restoration process.”