Google’s servers must be on fire today with searches relating to two big judicial news stories: Proposition 8 upheld by the CA Supreme Court, and Obama’s nomination of federal appelate court judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court.
I was curious which of these news items would get a higher volume of searches today. It’s too early to read the trends on Google Trends (which runs a couple days behind), but based on the hourly updates on “hot” searches, it seems that Prop. 8 is the more popularly-searched topic.* Three of the top 25 searches at this moment are related to Prop. 8, while the query “sotomayor” comes in at a lowly #30, showing us that the internet generation, if not the rest of the universe, is significantly more interested in the Prop 8 decision than the possible next justice of our Supreme Court.
Digging a little deeper into searches on Ms. Sotomayor, I see the following three queries in today’s top 100:
- sotomayor
- sonia sotomayor biography
- sotomayor abortion
- sotomayor wiki
Boom – there it is, the third on the list is “sotomayor abortion.” No matter how evenhanded the news tries to be (here is CNN with a post-nomination poll, not even mentioning abortion), a large number people are primarily interested in how this nominee is expected to rule on the abortion question.
I’m afraid those looking for an answer to how Ms. Sotomayor would rule on abortion are in for a disappointing dearth of previous rulings. Here’s the quote from Wikipedia, with the full extent of her previous rulings:
In Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush,[44] Sotomayor upheld the Bush administration‘s implementation of the Mexico City Policy which requires foreign organizations receiving U.S. funds to “neither perform nor actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations”. Sotomayor held that the policy did not constitute a violation of equal protection, as the government “is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds”.[45]
Of course, the lack of real information won’t stop pundits from spouting opinions on the matter, and some pundits are savvy enough to use SEO to get their blatherings into top listings on Google. For example, a rightpundits.com article titled “Sotomayor Abortion: Catholic Sonia Sotomayor on Abortion” is obviously designed to rank well for the phrase “sotomayor abortion,” and has managed to weasel its way into not one but two spots on Google’s top page of results.
It’s terribly unnatural in this day and age, but here’s a case where we all have to close Google, sit back, and wait and see what Ms. Sotomayor will do.
*update, I was wrong, so wrong! Sotomayor was actually the more-searched. Here’s the actual trend for that day:
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