Justice 111: Confirm Sonia Sotomayor
With a TV image of Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, in the background, Judge Sonia Sotomayor shows the strain of last week's confirmation hearings.
History will show that Sonia Sotomayor would become the first person of Hispanic heritage to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court and only the third woman. But regardless of heritage or gender, what is most important is that Ms. Sotomayor is amply qualified to serve as the court’s 111th justice.
If there had been any doubt, Ms. Sotomayor erased them week in hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee. As a handful of Republican senators tried to entice her into stepping on oratorical or emotional land mines, she took their toughest shots, showing her legal mettle and judicial temperament.
With poise and deliberation, she endured four days of televised intellectual chess under the hot lights of television crews. She didn’t invent the art form; both Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito were equally imperturbable in their confirmation hearings. Indeed, it’s the only way to survive in today’s sad era of partisan judicial wrangling.
Ms. Sotomayor was flogged with questions focusing on her public comments about what perspective a “wise Latina” would provide from the bench and a painstaking autopsy of the Supreme Court’s recent reversal of her appellate court ruling in Ricci vs. DeStefano, a reverse-discrimation case brought by New Haven, Conn., firefighters.
Ms. Sotomayor has rock-solid credentials: a long career as a prosecutor, trial court judge, civil litigator and 17 years as a federal judge, including the last 11 years on the Second U.S. Court of Appeals in New York. That gives her more judicial experience than any Supreme Court nominee in almost a century. She is a self-avowed workaholic whose driven work habits have meant personal sacrifices.
Her biography alone is compelling: The daughter of Puerto Rican citizens who moved to New York during World War II, she grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx. She earned merit scholarships to Princeton and Yale Law School. But it is her legal and intellectual experience that makes her fit for the high court.
The usual litmus tests were thoroughly probed: affirmative action, abortion policy, gun rights and gay marriage. As did Mssrs. Roberts and Alito before her, Ms. Sotomayor repeatedly answered that she would “apply the law” rather “make the law” based on court precedents.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., using anonymous comments from lawyers who had argued before her court, raised questions about an intemperate and bullying demeanor. It backfired; Mr. Graham seemed the bully instead. Had she been prone to mean-spirited outbursts, decades of court transcripts would have been trotted out.
Democratic senators were gentle, even fawning, at times, coaxing her into a sort of apology for comments about how a “wise Latina” judge might behave. She called it a “poorly worded” statement that gave some people misperceptions about personal biases.
Few, if any, minds on the committee were changed. A committee vote could come Tuesday, though Republicans may ask for a week’s delay, hoping a skeleton will leap out of the closet at the last minute. Failing that, confirmation is assured. Democrats have the votes, though that should not be the standard.
Regardless of politics, the president has the right to see his appointees confirmed, as long as they are qualified by experience and as long as their views are not out of the mainstream of constitutional thought. We supported Mr. Roberts’ nomination, but had reservations about Mr. Alito’s extreme positions.
Ms. Sotomayor’s record is impeccable and puts her squarely in the mainstream. She deserves prompt confirmation.
Have you ever considered that no cares what you think. I’m sure everyone in the county is waiting for your opinion.
Obama could have nominated Paris Hilton and you would have agreed with him. Go back to your editorials about how we are going to burn up in a couple hundred years and leave the real editorials to the newspapers that are going to be around for a while.
I hope Obama”s next nominee for the Supreme court is a black female lesbian. That would make all the white conservative supremicists have a collective heart attack.
I am getting tired of “identity politics”. I am also getting sick of “identity editorials”. I heard a lawyer who had tried many cases in front of her on TV the other day. He was talking candidly about her abilities. He said he always felt like she was trying to conivnce everyone she was smarter than they were. That’s usually a sign they’re not. He also described her as overbearing, humiliating and bad tempered. Sounds like she will fit right in. Our country is on the brink of irrelevance and we continue to concern ourselves with finding the right flavor of judge or employee while China laughs at us. Books will be written on our demise. They will be written in Chinese.
Speaking of embarassment, please tell everyone about your boy Franken and his questions to the almighty latina.
Elections have consequences. Is this what you voted for? Then you got it. A completely unqualified, 6 time loser in front of the Supreme Court and now on it. If you can’t beat them, wait until your guy gets into office, then join them. There is a reason her decisions won’t hold up….she doesn’t care about the Constitution or the Law, just her own personal political agenda………but then again, we just have one Marxist/Socialist replacing another…this time appointed by a bird of the same feather………Souter is the only bad mark on George Bush Sr. record.
I can’t stand liberal judges that think guns shoot people by themselves but in in this case, it isn’t the case. Sotomeyer’s answer is “Apply the law” and thats the key. Too many liberal and conservative judges think they have the right to change the law and sometimes do. Unfortunately, today’s brand of conservatives are from the fanatical right-wing who are now classed as the nation’s largest hate group and today’s left-wing arm-chair liberals are trying to change the constitution to protect their fantasy agenda from them. Thus everybody suffers. The main reason those air-head right-wing senators are afraid of Sotomeyer is they can’t bully her and she’s a thousand percent smarter. Yikes. They can’t even buy her off like they’ve been bought off by Corporate America. The church nazis are gonna have a fit too if they can’t get her to turn our schools into children’s religious brainwashing centers.
Apply the law isn’t what those slavering wingers want to hear.
Stop the presses! Post-Dispatch endorses Sotomayor!
What a revelation the confirmation hearings were. I was relieved to learn that minorities, and women, can be just as rascist as those of the “Caucasian persuasion”. So what if she can’t write a coherent opinion re racial preferences. Who cares if she perjured herself during sworn testimony. She has a compelling life story and a last name that has an accent on the final “O”! If constitutional scholars like Al Franken and Chuck Schumer support her, what else is there to know? As President Barack Hussein Obama has stated so eloquently, “It’s time to let her get out there and start dispensin’ some justice!”.
Deleted. Living room rule.
Yet this from Hogan you give the Green Light:
“you ignorant fascis racist corporatist twit … the far right wing fascist racist
croporatist necon Brown Shirt weblog echochambering yobbo yappers” ~ Tim Hogan
Tim Hogan is an idiot.