Tags : Sotomayor
Senate Judiciary Panel Holds Confirmation Vote On Sotomayor
Washington, D.C. (AHN) – The Senate Judiciary Committee votes on Tuesday whether to endorse the nomination of Appeals Court judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. Only one Republican in the panel plans to vote to confirm the Obama administration’s first nominee for the high court, which will also require a full Senate vote.
Sotomayor needs Senate confirmation before she can sit as the replacement of retired Justice David Souter when the Supreme Court reconvenes on Sept. 9, and begins its new term on Oct. 5.
Democrats want her confirmed by August 6, before Congress takes a month-long recess. Republicans do not have the numbers to derail her nomination, and observers are unanimous in saying that she will be confirmed.
The Judiciary Committee had postponed its vote for a week upon the request of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the panel’s top Republican, for more time to review Sotomayor’s record.
Sessions had said during the judge’s four-day confirmation hearing that she will likely be confirmed before the August recess, but nevertheless announced in an op-ed on Monday that he would not vote to confirm her.
Sotomayor had “attempt[ed] to rebrand her previously stated judicial approach” during the hearings, he said in a column on USA Today.
“She rejected the president’s ‘empathy standard,’ abandoned her statements that a judge’s ‘opinions, sympathies and prejudices’ may guide decision-making, dismissed remarks that personal experiences should ‘affect the facts that judges choose to see,’ brushed aside her repeated “wise Latina” comment as ‘a rhetorical flourish,’ and championed judicial restraint,” Sessions added. “In the end, her testimony served as a repudiation of judicial activism.”
Confirmation hearings for the judge ended on June 16, with observers remarking on her unemotional testimony over the course of four days, and consistent deflection of controversial questions such as her stance on abortion.
A large part of the hearings focuesed on her 2001 speech at the University of California, Berkeley that conservatives had criticized in the weeks leading up to the hearings. She had said in the speech, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often that not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
While admitting, “My play on those words fell flat. It was bad,” Sotomayor explained it was not her intention to say that personal prejudices take a primary role in the way judges decide cases, and that her statements should be understood within the context of her speeches.
Throughout the proceedings, she cited her 17-year judicial record as demonstrative of her belief that “judges do not make law.”
She also made a bold departure from the man who nominated her.
“I wouldn’t approach the issue of judging in the way the president does,” the judge responded when asked if she agreed with President Barack Obama’s statement that in about five percent of cases judges have no other way to come to a conclusion than for them to consider what is in their hearts.
But Sotomayor’s testimony was dismissed by some conservatives as a “confirmation conversion,” the phrase used by Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in 1987 for Reagan Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork. Sessions used the same phrase as the title of his op-ed.
Only one Republican member of the Judiciary Committee has said he will vote to confirm the judge: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who had told Sotomayor on the first day of the hearings she would be confirmed unless she had a “complete meltdown, said in his final round of questioning he was reassured that the judge was not radical, and had only “missed” making the right ruling in the New Haven firefighter case.
Sotomayor has been criticized for her ruling against white firefighters in New Haven who sued city officials for canceling promotions in 2003 because not enough blacks had passed the qualifying examinations.
Her ruling in the case, in Ricci v. Destefano, was overturned by the Supreme Court last month in a 5-4 split decision.
Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and John Cornyn (R-TX), all members of the Judiciary panel, have said they will vote against Sotomayor.
Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) has also said he will not support the judge for the high court.
Cornyn, a member of the Judiciary panel and chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, was magnanimous in praising the judge in his statement. But he also spoke plainly about his frustration that a Republican nominee had not been the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
“Going into the hearings – I found much to admire about Judge Sotomayor’s record,” he said. “She is an experienced judge with an excellent academic background. She has the temperament we expect from members of our highest court. And – for the most part – her decisions as a District Court judge and on the Second Court of Appeals were within the mainstream of American jurisprudence.”
“Yet several of her decisions demonstrated the kind of liberal judicial activism that has steered the court in the wrong direction over the last few years,” he added.”And many of her public statements reflected a surprisingly radical view of the law… I will vote with the certain knowledge that she will be confirmed despite my vote… And I hope she proves that my doubts are unfounded. ”
The Texas senator cited his experience as a judge and the successful Democratic filibuster of a Republican nominee, Miguel Estrada, in 2003 for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. “I remain deeply frustrated.. had he been confirmed – he could have been the first Hispanic nominated to serve on our nation’s highest Court,” he said.
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