How will the GOP react to President Obama's pick to replace Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court? Who cares? It doesn't matter what Senate Republicans think of Sonia Sotomayor. The GOP does not have the votes to stop her. Only Democrats — or Sotomayor herself — can torpedo the admission of Sotomayor to the Big Bench.
The fascination with the GOP's response to Sotomayor illustrates that Democrats are desperate to make Republican criticism, not Sotomayor, the issue. It's true: Republicans can raise questions about Obama's nominee, but only Democratic answers will determine her fate. So far, they seem to be standing by Obama's preference for a justice with "empathy" — probably because voters don't see empathy as a bad thing.
And what's not to like in a compelling against-the-odds personal success story? Me? Of course, I would rather not see a very liberal judge on the team, but I also think that a duly elected president has won the power to pick Supreme Court justices. A nominee with Sotomayor's credentials should be assumed competent. The Senate should reject only clearly unfit candidates for this lifetime position.
Now, that's not what Obama thought when he was a senator. "I would support the filibuster of some" of Bush' picks for the federal bench," he wrote in his memoir, "The Audacity of Hope," "if only to signal to the White House the need to moderate its next selections." And: "It behooves a president — and benefits our democracy — to find moderate nominees who can garner some measure of bipartisan support."
His support for moderation notwithstanding, Obama voted against Chief Justice John G. Roberts (who won 78 Senate votes) and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. (58 votes). Ditto Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-San Francisco, who complained that she did not know where Roberts stood on abortion.
Be it noted that top Democrats have voted against qualified candidates.
Veep Joe Biden wrote in his memoir, "Promises to Keep," that he felt he could fight the (ultimately failed) nomination of Robert Bork because, "An ideologically driven nominee who was chosen for his willingness to overturn settled precedent would invite a divisive and unnecessary fight."
Let the record show that top Democrats recognize the legitimacy in opposing overly ideological judges on the Big Bench.
In a 2001 speech at the UC Berkeley School of Law, Sotomayor wondered whether impartiality is achievable and confessed that she hoped "that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
The issue is not that Sotomayor self-identifies as a "wise Latina woman," but what she meant when she said, "I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society." Is she simply being honest about personal biases? Or does she believe that women and minorities — the speech included a gratuitous dig at Justice Clarence Thomas — should rule according to their demographic?
As for precedent: On Tuesday, the California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8 — which limited marriage to a man and a woman. Chief Justice Ronald George wrote that that the court's "role is limited to interpreting and applying the principles and rules embodied in the California Constitution, setting aside our own personal beliefs and values."
Justice Carlos Moreno, the lone dissenter, however, cited the court's "traditional constitutional function of protecting persecuted minorities from the majority will."
Someone on the Senate Judiciary Committee ought to ask Sotomayor: Who's right? I want to hear that answer.
E-mail Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@sfchronicle.com. To find out more about Debra J. Saunders, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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Ma'am;...You say it does not matter.... The fact is that this is a lousy pick for the Democrats, but a terrible pick for the Republicans...This is like pollen to the bees, for them, or crap for a fly, and they will get it all over them in the hope of making some political hay...And every time they run her down they will run women and hispanics down which is the very groups they most need to hold to have power...Mr. Obama has given them the opportunity to behave as essshole, and they might respectfully decline...Instead they jump at the opportunity...The criteria Mr. Obama has set, which he cannot himself meet, are of a person able to see beyond the form of law to the relationship that form should nurture, and to correct it, -is a threat to all that most republicans hold dear...We are deeply divided as a country, and often divided on issues that should be no part of national consideration...The chances of us being able to correct the failures of our constitution with a vote are slim...In a country where all men are presumed equal we could not get two thirds to agree to include women in that number, constitutionally...Does this mean that the court of last appeal should not see women as equal???Why should they without a woman there to remind them that women are the equal of men in mind, where it counts???What the republicans should count on is that the book of Cannon Law, and the authority of the Pope in every Catholic life is such that she will not long dare to defy the church, and will submit on bended knees to their rule...It is something they should count on, and something every liberal should fear, that the humanity of Mrs. Sotomayor is only skin deep, and that her Catholicism goes right to the bone...The danger, as Mr. Limbaugh, and others see it, is equity... If the constitution should be corrected by the court with a view to our survival as a nation, then property rights will be limited, and there will be justice in taxation so that the great wealth that has perverted our democracy, divided this people, and brought our commonwealth to ruin will be harnassed, and tamed.... The Catholic Church once lost power in England over the issue of Just Profits, and I trust they have learned to keep their noses out of the pockets of the rich...The danger is that they have not learned to keep out of the bed rooms of the poor... If Mrs. Sotomayor has learned one thing from her Catholic education I hope it is this: that all are equal in the eyes of God, and should be equal in the courts of our land...She must be able to grasp that property rights has to be paid for by those with property unless all people without property will pay for them... Just as the South destroyed itself, its currency, and its economy because it refused to tax itself when it might have done some good, and lost their war in their congress as they never did on the battlefield; so the rich should be taxed though they should never consent, for the good of the country, and the benefit of the commonwealth...If this land is owned by a handfull they must alone pay for their rights, and for their defense because the rest of us cannot... And no law in this land no matter how sacred the pen of the father who wrote it will ever stand against the changed realities of another day... Law must serve our relationship, or we will see our relationship die, as we have seen it die in the past over the issue of slavery... That is today the same issue, whether one without property or rights will labor at life for one with rights and property... Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Thu May 28, 2009 6:51 AM
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The fact of the matter is that choosing someone who believes in the value of EMPATHY over the value of adhering to the law, as a means of applying justsice, is a breach of the oath to DEFEND the CONSTITUTION, a step toward massive injustice perpetrated upon the people by the court that is supposed to administer the LAW in a non-discriminatory manner, and a giant step away from the TRADITION of impartiality in the application of the LAW. Not too long ago, in this forum, I read someone's article about the cognitive dissonance between loving America and wanting to remake it. To profess belief in the honesty and integrity of a court that is peopled with justices such as Ginsberg, who believes that foreign law is superior to ours, and Sotomayor, who believes that feeling ,not reason , should be the basis of a jusstice's decision is the folly of liberalism rampant. We more sober thinking people may not be able to stop this step toward the disintegration of our country, but we certainly owe our children and grandchildren the attempt.
Comment: #2
Posted by: Jobe
Mon Jun 1, 2009 7:54 AM
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