Sotomayor Hearings Day 4 Open Thread
Highlights from Day 3 of the Sotomayor confirmation hearings.
Republicans really don’t want the support of Hispanics. A Republican group, the Committee for Justice, released an ad comparing a Puerto Rican group to al Qaeda. Orrin Hatch attended a fundraiser for this group on Sunday, but is now distancing himself from the ad.
New Haven fireman Frank Ricci got caught fluffing his resume. I’ll have to admit to a great amount of curiosity about Ricci’s testimony. What will he add? He’s not a legal expert, so is he there to tell everyone how sad he was when the Appeals Court ruled against him?
Sotomayor tells Cornyn that her “wise Latina” remarks aren’t so different than Alito’s. (Good job calling on the double standard.)
Two weeks ago, Alito cast the deciding vote in Ricci v. DeStefano, an intensely contested affirmative action case. He did so by ruling in favor of the Italian-American firefighters, finding that they were unlawfully discriminated against, even though the district court judge who heard all the evidence and the three-judge appellate panel ruled against them and dismissed their case. Notably, the majority Supreme Court opinion Alito joined (.pdf) began by highlighting not the relevant legal doctrine, but rather, the emotional factors that made the Italian-American-plaintiffs empathetic.
Did Alito’s Italian-American ethnic background cause him to cast his vote in favor of the Italian-American plaintiffs? Has anyone raised that question? Given that he himself said that he “do[es] take that into account” — and given that Sonia Sotomayor spent 6 straight hours today being accused by GOP Senators and Fox News commentators of allowing her Puerto Rican heritage to lead her to discriminate against white litigants — why isn’t that question being asked about Alito’s vote in Ricci?
Senator Franken and soon-to-be Justice Sotomayor share a love of Perry Mason.
Tags: Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court
follow up from yesterday’s presente.com ad denouncing FLA legislators for not denouncing Rush L.
http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jul/14/presente/rush-limbaugh-sonia-sotomayor-adam-putnam/
The Huffpo live blog I mentioned yesterday could not have been more wrong about Senator Ted acting like the typical Corporation loving Delaware Senator.
Check out Politico:
“SCOTUS needs to respect regulation, Kaufman says
Delaware Sen. Ted Kaufman raises a seminal and altogether overlooked point about Sotomayor’s [likely] tenure — it will coincide with a wave of litigation trying to overturn [likely] legislation regulating the financial industry.
Other senators are fixated on Ricci, Roe and Heller — but the Delaware Democrat suggested it was more likely the Roberts court will be called upon by big business to roll back onerous new government regulations, dealing a huge blow to reform comparable to the setback FDR suffered in the Schechter case in ’35.
“Congress can and will act a dramatically improved regulatory system,” Kaufman said. “The president can and will make sure that the relevant re-enforcement agencies are populated with smart, motivated and effective agents. But a Supreme Court resistant to federal government involvement in and regulation of markets could undermine those efforts.”
I would have instantly known that had I been paying attention to Kaufman’s concerns over the past few months.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0309/20497.html
BTW – The people who picked the under at 70 are insane.
The over under should have been 80. The American Bar Association rated her “well-qualified” their highest rating. The ABA’s rating is an evaluation of integrity, professional competence, and judicial temperament. Fact is, she is qualified, competent, bright and her decisions have been well within mainstream legal thinking. These were well-known facts when Obama nominated her. The republicans, hoping to score points (with a very small white constituency) by raising race, gender and ethnic arguments were soundly beaten in the hearings. Lost in much of the coverage was the underlying republican message: only white males and conservatives know the real meaning of the Constitution and are free from bias when deciding cases. Women, blacks and “others” do not. Such thinking is pure lunacy. No one is perfectly free from any bias and conservative justices historically have placed ideology ahead of Constitutional law when rendering decisions on equal rights, education and big business. And anyway, one could argue the most activist court in history was the Rehnquist court, which struck down over 30 provisions of federal law (Gun Free School Zone Act, Brady Bill, Violence Against Women Act, Age Discrimination Act, Americans with Disabilities Act) in just six years. So much for precedent, original intent and strict constructionists who don’t have a political bias or use judicial activism when rendering decisions.
But I digress. At least the republicans are starting to figure out when they’re beat and can finally state the obvious.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. described her judicial record as “generally in the mainstream” and said he thought she would keep an open mind on gun rights. Graham, who has said previously he may vote to confirm Sotomayor, said she was “not an activist.”
Another Republican, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, also called Sotomayor’s rulings “pretty much in the mainstream.”
Shocking.
At his Senate confirmation hearing, Sam Alito used his opening statement to emphasize how his experience as an Italian-American influences his judicial decision-making by saying, “When I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country . . . . 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 INTO ACCOUNT.”
Two weeks ago, Alito cast the deciding vote in Ricci v. DeStefano, an intensely contested affirmative action case. He did so by ruling in favor of the Italian-American firefighters, finding that they were unlawfully discriminated against, even though the district court judge who heard all the evidence and the three-judge appellate panel ruled against them and dismissed their case. Notably, the majority Supreme Court opinion Alito joined began by highlighting not the relevant legal doctrine, but rather, the emotional factors that made the Italian-American-plaintiffs empathetic.
Did Alito’s Italian-American ethnic background cause him to cast his vote in favor of the Italian-American plaintiffs? Sure smells like it.
Also: if empathy is irrelevant to judicial decision-making, why are GOP Senators calling Frank Ricci as a witness at this hearing? Since he’s obviously not there to testify about the strict legalistic doctrines governing his claims, but instead is only there to trumpet the facts that make him “sympathetic” so that people will emotionally react against Sotomayor’s ruling (his dyslexia, the amount he spent on books and tutors, his hopes for a promotion, blah, blah, blah), isn’t everything he has to say totally irrelevant pursuant to the GOP’s alleged judicial principles? The answer, sadly, is yes.