Day #2 of the hearings for confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor were interesting, mainly for Republicans embarrassing themselves. It was the first day of questioning. Below are some highlights.
Senator Jeff Sessions apparently believes that all judges of Puerto Rican descent should vote alike:
This morning, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) castigated Sotomayor for not ruling with her fellow Puerto Rican colleague, conservative Judge José A. Cabranes, when she decided to deny an en banc appeal in Ricci v. DeStefano, a process in which all judges of a court hear a case (as opposed to a three-judge panel of them). Sessions seemed to indicate that people of the same ancestry should vote the same way.
SESSIONS: You voted not to reconsider the prior case. You voted to stay with the decision of the circuit. And in fact your vote was the key vote. Had you voted with Judge Cabranes, himself of Puerto Rican ancestry, had you voted with him, you could’ve changed that case.
Sessions slammed Sotomayor as being “unsuitable for the bench” due to her past affiliation with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF). Apparently, Sessions didn’t realize that Judge Cabranes also served on PRLDEF’s board.
Sessions also got some serious pwnage by Sotomayor.
In a variation of the old admonition that a lawyer should never ask a question if they don’t know the answer, today Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) learned that it’s not a good idea to use someone to make an argument without making sure that the person being used isn’t in the room:
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), seeking to discredit Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy, cited her 2001 “wise Latina” speech, and contrasted the view that ethnicity and sex influence judging with that of Judge Miriam Cedarbaum, who “believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices.”
“My friend Judge Cedarbaum is here,” Sotomayor riposted, to Sessions’s apparent surprise. “We are good friends, and I believe that we both approach judging in the same way, which is looking at the facts of each individual case and applying the law to those facts.”
And what does Cedarbaum think about Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy?
I don’t believe for a minute that there are any differences in our approach to judging, and her personal predilections have no affect on her approach to judging.”
Lindsey Graham accused Sotomayor of being a bully.
In the most aggressive questioning of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing thus far, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) read out a laundry list of complaints about the nominee this afternoon. Graham went through insult after insult from anonymous reviews about Sotomayor’s temperament, including ones that called her “nasty,” “a terror,” “a bit of a bull,” and one that said she lacks any “judicial temperament.” Graham then asked her directly: “Do you think you have a temperament problem?”
He also harped on her “wise Latina” quote.
After voicing those complaints and telling Sotomayor that “maybe these hearings are a time for self-reflection” for her, Graham became a bit of a bully himself, asking her if she remembered her “wise Latina” quote. When the judge answered in the affirmative, he asked her to recite it – twice. Sotomayor hedged a response, and Graham plowed ahead, said, “I’ve got it here,” and read the quote out himself.
During the opening day of confirmation hearings, Judge Sonia Sotomayor came under fire from Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) for stating that her experiences as a Latina affects her judicial outlook. “This empathy standard is troubling to me,” Grassley said. “The Constitution requires that judges be free from personal politics … feelings and preferences.”
But Grassley never objected when Judge Samuel Alito said virtually the same thing during his confirmation hearing, when Alito testified he “can’t help but think of” his immigrant family when evaluating immigration cases:
When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background, or because of religion or because of gender, and I do take that in to account.