Vote No on Sonia Sotomayor

Absent a miracle, Judge Sonia Sotomayor will take a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nevertheless, the Republican minority still has an opportunity to use her nomination to educate the American people about the dangers of politicizing the judiciary.

President Barack Obama made a politically astute pick. Sonia Sotomayor is a competent jurist who symbolizes hard work, personal achievement, and ethnic diversity.

However, as Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) argued during the hearing on John Roberts, “the burden of proof for a Supreme Court justice is on the nominee.” Judge Sotomayor has not met that burden.

While talking up her background, Sotomayor’s advocates have emphasized her moderate record on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. However, Circuit Court judges remain constrained by the possibility of Supreme Court review — and the hope of advancing to the high court. Judge Sotomayor’s testimony was useless, as intended, in assessing her judicial philosophy. Writing in Slate, Dahlia Lithwick concluded: Sotomayor “dodges, hedges, and evades her way through softball and hardball questions alike.” Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) put it more harshly: the Judge was “evasive, lacking in substance and, in several instances, incredibly misleading.”

In trying to assess how Justice Sotomayor would behave, we should consider the president’s expectations. Then-Sen. Obama, who voted against both John Roberts and Samuel Alito, emphasized the “quality of empathy.” While most cases can be decided on the basis of case law and precedent, said Sen. Obama, there remain five percent which “can only be determined on the basis of one’s deepest values, one’s core concerns, one’s broader perspectives on how the world words, and the depth and breadth of one’s empathy.” Alas, this latter category, however few in number, accounts for most of the important issues about which we most care and which most divide us.

Sonia Sotomayor’s rhetoric and background suggests that she shares the president’s general perspective. For instance, she has been involved in ethnic identity activism and politics throughout her college and professional life. She spent 12 years as a board member of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, which promoted the usual ethnic agenda of coerced diversity and multiculturalism as well as the usual liberal agenda including support for abortion and opposition to capital punishment.

Source:
Vote No on Sonia Sotomayor
spectator.org