As Monday's opening of the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor approaches, there's lots of reporting to pass along about her and what kind of justice she might be.

NPR's Nina Totenberg added to her ongoing coverage today on Morning Edition with a look at the tough New York neighborhood Sotomayor grew up in and how that affected her life.

And just a short time ago, the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University's School of Law released its report on "Judge Sotomayor's Record in Constitutional Cases." Its conclusion after studying 1,194 of the constitutional cases from Sotomayor's Second Circuit Court of Appeals:

Sotomayor is "solidly in the mainstream of the Second Circuit." It found, for example, that she "voted with the majority in 99.2% of the constitutional cases." (The circuit is roughly split between Democratic and Republican appointees.)

Here is the study's author, attorney Monica Youn of the center's Democracy Program, on a conference call with reporters today:

Burt Neuborne, the center's legal director, said the report "makes it absolutely clear that Judge Sotomayor has been a mainstream jurist":

The consensus, Neuborne says, is that judges should decide cases by first considering legal precedent, then the text of the law and then the intent. Only if none of those factors can offer guidance, he says, do judges such as Sotomayor then look at "consequences."

Neuborne does think, though, that if she can't rely on precedent, text and intent then Sotomayor would be more inclined than the other justices to view a case from the perspective of someone at the bottom of the social scale:

One other story to pass along today: The Washington Post writes that "uncommon detail marks rulings by Sotomayor." The Post says that:

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's opinions show support for the rights of criminal defendants and suspects, skepticism of corporations, and sympathy for plaintiffs alleging discrimination, an analysis of her record by The Washington Post found. And she has delivered those rulings with a level of detail considered unusual for an appellate judge.

Update at 2:25 p.m. ET. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse today offers its own analysis of "of 7,750 prosecutions handled by the 52 judges who served in the federal district court covering Manhattan, Westchester and several other neighboring counties from FY 1993 to FY 1998. The record shows that Judge Sotomayor handled 261 of the district-wide total of prosecutions."

It's conclusion: As a trial judge, Sotomayor "was more likely than her colleagues to send a person to prison."

Want to know about the arguments opponents of Sotomayor's confirmation will be making? This post is a good place to start.