Sotomayor: High Fidelity
Posted: Tuesday, July 14, 2009 9:18 AM by Mark Murray
Filed Under:
Congress, Courts
”Judge Sonia Sotomayor told lawmakers Monday that her overriding philosophy is ‘fidelity to the law,’ countering Republicans who questioned her impartiality on the first day of her Supreme Court confirmation hearings,” the Wall Street Journal writes.
The Washington Post: “The first day of hearings was a pageant of prepared statements and carefully choreographed strategy, but the contours of the week's proceedings became clear: Democrats portrayed Sotomayor as a role model ‘for all Americans,’ a seasoned jurist with a modest and restrained approach who, if anything, might balance a court that has swung too far to the right. Republicans sought to cast doubt on Sotomayor's impartiality, saying her statements and rulings have forecast the activist approach she would take when freed of having to follow precedent.”
The Boston Globe sets yesterday’s scene: "There was a feeling of good will when Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor entered a filled-to-capacity Senate hearing room yesterday: the loud buzz of conversation fell to a hush, and she grinned at relatives sitting in the crowd as she took her seat at the witness table. As nearly three dozen news cameras clicked rapidly, a parade of senators on the Judiciary Committee approached Sotomayor, offering good wishes and good luck. They seemed mindful that history would unfold with the questioning of the first Hispanic ever nominated for the nation’s highest court - and President Obama’s first chance to shape perhaps the country’s most powerful institution. But less than a half-hour after Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing began, the reverential atmosphere was transformed into an ideological slam dance."
The Washington Post’s Dan Balz says that Republicans have the greater burden during today’s Q&A. “They must tread carefully, balancing their desire to use the hearings to frame a debate over legal philosophies that their constituents want to see with their concern that they do nothing to show insensitivity or disrespect toward the fastest-growing minority group in the country.”
"The man whose name became a verb -- for how to trash and defeat a Supreme Court nominee -- has some simple advice for Sonia Sotomayor. 'Don't lose your temper,' Robert Bork says in an interview airing tonight on CNN. 'If she just maintains an even emotional temper, she'll be confirmed easily,' he adds."
