Sonia Sotomayor, poised to become the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court, enters a round of Senate Judiciary Committee hearings starting Monday in the pursuit of confirmation of President Barack Obama's first nominee for the high court.
The ABA is happy with the judge from the Second Judicial Circuit in New York, a member of the federal judiciary since the early 990s.
The NRA is not so happy about a judge whose apparent philosophical bent troubles the gun lobby. Others have had more difficulty assessing what to make of Sotomayor.
But the issue, unlike the photo above, is not black and white.
Most of the Senate already has had a chance to get a personal impression of the judge born of Puerto Rican parents in the housing projects of New York and educated at Ivy League colleges, the judge having made the rounds of 89 Senate offices heading into this week's hearings. And today, with a telephone phone call from the Oval Office, Obama wished his nominee well in the hearings ahead.
""President Obama called Judge Sotomayor from the Oval Office this morning to wish her good luck as she completed preparations for her confirmation hearing,'' White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said.
"He complimented the Judge for making courtesy calls to 89 senators in which she discussed her adherence to the rule of law throughout her 17 years on the federal bench,'' Gibbs said. "The president expressed his confidence that Judge Sotomayor would be confirmed to serve as a Justice on the Supreme Court for many years to come."
Tune in here at the Swamp for coverage of it all.
Comments
So she was okay when George H. W. Bush nominated her but now she's got all kinds of problems? I think the Republicans need to re-think their opposition.
Posted by: lochnesssmonster | July 12, 2009 4:53 PM
When this wise Latina is confirmed to the highest court in the land, it will be a fiiting response to Pat Buchanan and all the nativist trash like him.
http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=103579
I can't wait.
Posted by: Nick | July 13, 2009 10:51 AM
http://www.iphones4free.com/default.aspx?r=1287808
Posted by: bryson dawson | July 13, 2009 12:10 PM
I hope for all our sakes that she helps out the average family in her decision making. I am tired of cutting out coupons for hours on end from www.slickbudget.com just to make ends meet.
Posted by: Coolhandluke | July 13, 2009 12:12 PM
there is only one Constitution of America for all people no matter what their color, religion or gender...why doesn't Sotomayor understand that? she is a racist and voting against the fire fighters is the perfect example of that!
Posted by: mindy rodriguez | July 13, 2009 12:15 PM
Much too much ado about NOTHING.
Does anyone truly believe that the Supreme Court Justices who denied freedom to the plaintiff in Plessey versus Ferguson, stating that the Black man had no rights regarding which the White man need be concerned, made the decision free of the inherent prejudices of his personal ethnicity and upbringing? A brief look at the decisions of current Supreme Court Justice Scalia will show virtually NO decisions in which the rights of ethnic minorities have prevailed over Whites, despite his southern European heritage once viewed. Roberts and Alito were chosen precisely because they would rely upon their White heritage to protect the interest of the WASP establishment from any significant attempt to protect or expand the rights of ethnic minorities [swiftly becoming majority].
So all this claptrap about Sotomayor persists in nonsense and hypocrisy. Sotomayor wisely acknowledged that her background gives her a perspective and backdrop against which she could evaluate issues that might come before her, and perhaps view them with greater sensitivity than someone from a more limited experiential background. There are, unfortunately, still people in the echelons of power who have never had a genuine encounter with an everyday person of color, a person in poverty or someone disenfranchised. These "select few" are the ones who Sessions and others of his stripe would prefer to see on the Supreme Court Bench. How sad. The very essence of the values upon which the country and the concept of a Supreme Court was supposedly founded lies in the ability to recognize, understand and empathize with people of any walk of life, ethnicity and socio-economic class.
The fallacy of slavish adherence to "law" or precedent is that many of those precedents were created by Courts and justices who lacked comprehension and empathy. This is where precedent can depart from "law." Prior decisions, stare decisis should not be cast aside lightly, but sometimes it is just plain WRONG, as in the example of Plessey v Ferguson. A wiser, more mature and empathic reading and interpretation of the "law" later obliged the Supreme Court to cast that decision aside. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." It is these small minds that are attempting to conjure fears built upon ignorance of the public [and perhaps their own] about the legal process and the selection of Judge Sotomayor.
By any objective measure, Judge Sotomayor is more qualified by intellect, maturity and experience, to be a Supreme Court Justice than half the men with who she will share the responsibilities of the Court. It is fondly to be wished that she will share that wisdom borne of her experiences [the quote being used to attack her] with those empathically stunted jurists with whom she will work. If she does, we can indeed hope for better and wiser decisions from the Court that reflect the rights, needs and interests of all Americans instead of decisions that merely use twists of sophistry and talismanic references to reliance upon the "law" to preserve and protect the current system that unjustly favors a small group of socio-economic elitists.
Posted by: Underground Sanity | July 13, 2009 1:26 PM