Judge Sonia Sotomayor regularly sends her law clerks to the records office at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. There, they gather up the entire history of cases on which Sotomayor is writing an opinion or dissent -- all the motions in limine, the briefs on summary judgment, everything that came up from the district court.

Not many of Sotomayor's fellow judges do the same thing, said Melissa Murray, who clerked for her in 2003 and 2004. "There were very few cases where we had to fight with other chambers to get the record," recalled Murray, who now teaches law at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.

Sotomayor's preoccupation with the record usually finds its way into her writing and offers partial explanation for what some see as a weak spot in her resume: those long, plodding opinions that review every moment in the case history and cite, explore and dispose of every point made in the briefs and arguments. Her thoroughness makes for a sometimes leaden writing style that has emerged as a point of criticism now that she has been nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court -- even though the writing of some current justices also fails to soar. David Souter, the man she would replace, is a master of the triple negative and has a quaint, almost 19th century prose style that pleases some and bores others.

Supporters have rallied to Sotomayor's defense. "She's very thorough in addressing all the issues, rather than sweeping the chess pieces off the table," said fellow 2nd Circuit Judge Robert Katzmann. He called that a good thing: "There is a transparency, and no mystery, to her thought process."

But what Katzmann sees as transparency looks like smoked glass to critics.

'NOT ALWAYS A PLEASURE'

Stephanie Mencimer in Mother Jones magazine panned Sotomayor's writing style as "an impenetrable legal opus." In The New York Times, Adam Liptak was a shade more diplomatic when he wrote that her opinions are "not always a pleasure to read." Liptak also asserted that her opinions "reveal no larger vision, seldom appeal to history and consistently avoid quotable language."

Indiana University Maurer School of Law -- Bloomington professor William Popkin, author of a 2007 book on the evolution of judicial opinion writing, took a look at some of Sotomayor's decisions at the request of The National Law Journal. His verdict: "Her approach is to touch every base with a legalistic and analytical style. This way of writing will not bring along converts from either the public or the broader legal profession, outside of the area of specialty with which the case deals. Nor will it stand up to [Antonin] Scalia, as [John Paul] Stevens or [Stephen] Breyer do."

Former federal trial judge Paul Cassell said he does not think Sotomayor's methodical approach gives "exceptional guidance" to lower court judges. "Someone with a better style, who can cut through the morass and see the key issue, might offer clearer guidance." Cassell, now a law professor at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, said he has reviewed Sotomayor's decisions and didn't see "any flashes of light or touches of brilliance."

Take, for example, this sentence from Sotomayor's 2007 ruling in Riverkeeper Inc. v. Environmental Protection Agency, a win for environmental groups that the Supreme Court reversed this spring (pdf): "For the reasons that follow, we conclude that the statute's 'best technology available' standard permits cost-effectiveness considerations to influence the choice among technologies whose performance does not essentially differ from the performance of the best-performing technology whose cost the industry reasonably can bear, but that the statute does not permit the EPA to choose BTA on the basis of cost-benefit analysis."

Or this, from her 2002 ruling in Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush, upholding the Bush administration's policy denying funds to nongovernmental organizations promoting abortions worldwide: "Between the time that we decided Planned Parenthood [ Federation of America Inc. v. Agency for International Development in 1990] and the filing of the instant action, the Supreme Court issued a decision in which it criticized the practice whereby a court proceeds directly to the merits of a case while assuming arguendo that the plaintiffs have constitutional standing to bring the suit."

In his newsletter, George Washington University Law School legal writing lecturer Ross Guberman cited that sentence as a "51-word whopper" and criticized Sotomayor's "fondness for stale, trite phrases" such as "assuming arguendo " and "instant action." But overall, he was complimentary toward her prose, calling it "relentlessly logical, strong, and convincing." Her thoroughness is a good thing, especially at the appellate level, Guberman said in an interview. And he acknowledged in reference to the Riverkeeper case, "It's not easy to write about best-available standards under the Clean Water Act in a sarcastic, clever way."

Guberman and others have also noticed that Sotomayor's pen sharpens in dissent, reflecting a passion she seems to stifle when writing majority opinions. Jeffrey Rosen, whose widely discussed May 4 New Republic piece on Sotomayor said her writing was "not especially clean or tight," now praises her dissents, which, he wrote last week, "sometimes show flashes of civil-libertarian passion or indignation, even as they remain closely grounded in facts and precedents."

In the 2002 case Pappas v. Giuliani, Sotomayor dissented from a ruling that upheld New York City's firing of a police officer who mailed racist fliers to a group seeking charitable donations. The majority, she wrote pointedly, should not "gloss over three decades of jurisprudence and the centrality of First Amendment freedoms in our lives because it is confronted with speech it does not like and because a government employer fears a potential public response that it alone precipitated."

Sotomayor's six years as a federal trial judge are crucial in understanding her approach to opinion writing, said Alan Schoenfeld, who clerked for her in 2006 and 2007. She sees giving specific guidance to district court judges and litigators as a major part of her job, he said, and that requires going into detail. "She made it clear to her clerks that she really wanted to focus on standards of review and on the state of the record," said Schoenfeld, now an associate in Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr's New York office. "They were incredibly important to her."

Far from displaying a lack of confidence, Sotomayor's focus on details and unembellished language shows humility, said former clerk Murray. "She doesn't need to resort to grandstanding. She knows her opinions are not about her. … They're about making sure the litigants know they were heard."

'PEOPLE WHO ARE FIRSTS'

Georgetown University Law Center professor Susan Bloch, who clerked for the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, offers another theory to explain Sotomayor's thoroughness, which she thinks is a positive trait. "People who are firsts tend to be particularly careful because there are people watching out for mistakes," she said. Bloch saw that with Marshall and sees it as well in the writing of Sotomayor, who would be the first Hispanic justice on the high court.

Sotomayor acknowledged in a 2007 speech before the Latino Law Students Association at Cornell Law School that she is "not a natural writer." She recalled spending two summers teaching herself to write after getting a C on her first midterm paper at Princeton University. "Writing remains a challenge for me even today," she said. "Everything I write goes through multiple drafts."

Sotomayor did not think she was alone in her struggles with writing. She said that it's "a challenge for many Latino professionals," and she urged all law students to work on their writing. "It is the single most important skill you can develop to ensure your professional success," Sotomayor said.