Sonia Sotomayor

Among the 68 U.S. senators who voted Thursday to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court was Missouri Republican Christopher S. “Kit” Bond.

This editorial page has had its differences with Mr. Bond, and he with us, since he entered politics 41 years ago. He ran statewide eight times: for auditor, governor and senator. We endorsed him in five of those races, his opponent in three.

He has announced that he won’t run again. Thursday’s confirmation vote is one  he can cherish.

Mr. Bond and eight other GOP senators stood against their party’s leaders and a yapping cacophony of dissent in voting to confirm the New York jurist. Ms. Sotomayor is eminently qualified, as Mr. Bond noted Wednesday in announcing his intentions. The fact that he disagrees with many of her rulings and parts of her judicial philosophy did not deter him.

“I have always looked to the Constitution to guide my obligation to give advice and consent,” Mr. Bond said on the Senate floor. “It is an obligation separate and apart from my role as a legislator, when I vote for or against legislation before this body.

“Indeed, if the Constitution meant for us merely to vote on nominees, by simple or super majorities, it could easily have said so. If we were meant to do nothing more than cast a vote based on whether we agreed or disagreed with a nominee, where would we be then?”

We spoke with Mr. Bond after his floor speech; he said he would have voted the same way even if he were not stepping down after next year. “She’s not the justice I would have appointed,” he said, adding that he hoped his vote might “change the partisanship in this process in some small way.”

Mr. Bond has had a front-row seat as the process of confirming a justice to the court has changed dramatically, and not for the better.

In September 1986, when Mr. Bond was in the middle of his first campaign for the Senate, his future colleagues confirmed President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court. The vote was unanimous.

Robert H. Bork in 1987

That wouldn’t happen now, largely because of what happened the following year to Mr. Reagan’s nomination of Robert H. Bork to the high court. Mr. Bork was and is a brilliant, acerbic legal scholar, an “originalist” who had written that the Constitution contained no inherent right to privacy. Democrats argued that Mr. Bork’s views were far out of the mainstream of constitutional thought and would threaten abortion rights. Mr. Bond was one of only 42 senators who favored his confirmation.

Since then, presidents have been careful to find nominees who weren’t confrontational, like Mr. Bork, and who were willing to bob and weave their way through confirmation hearings and — if at all possible — who hadn’t taken divisive positions on abortion or other privacy issues.

The strategy failed only once, with Clarence Thomas’ nomination in 1991. Democrats uncovered a hostile witness in Anita Hill, who accused Mr. Thomas of sexual harassment. Mr. Bond was one of only 52 votes in favor of confirmation.

Mr. Bond supported President George W. Bush’s nominations of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito. Mr. Roberts easily won confirmation, 78-22, in 2005. But the following year Mr. Alito — not quite as smooth as Mr. Roberts — got only four Democratic votes in winning confirmation 58-42.

Both Mr. Roberts and Mr. Alito have proved to be, like Mr. Scalia, conservative activists who frequently have struck down legislative rulings and previous court rulings not to their liking. In considering Ms. Sotomayor’s alleged “activist” credentials, it helps to remember that activism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

It has always been thus. A man or a woman brings to the court his or her own experiences and beliefs; regardless of what the Judiciary Committee is told, he or she does not leave them at the courthouse door. All that should be asked of a nominee is that he or she be a scholar who will interpret the law in accordance with the traditions of the Constitution.

Mr. Bond found that to be the case with every nominee from Robert Bork to Sonia Sotomayor. Say what you will about his conclusions, but give him points for principle.