Justice Sotomayor has already established herself as a powerful voice in criminal law cases. Justice Sotomayor authored seventy-two total opinions during the period between the start of the 2009 Term and the end of the 2012 Term, and thirty-six percent of them were in criminal law.5 She has written major opinions for the Court as well as important concurrences and dissents, including dissents from the denial of certiorari.6 While she often votes for greater defendant protections, she sometimes sides with the government even when the Court is divided.7 She frequently calls upon “common sense” to help guide the Court in criminal cases. Common sense is obviously a vague term that may vary from person to person, but when Justice Sotomayor uses this term, she seems to mean knowledge of what is actually happening on the ground, informed by the trial record, empirical studies, and, in Justice Sotomayor’s case, a deep knowledge of the criminal justice system and the participants in it from her own experience. This core approach can be seen across a range of criminal law areas.