Nominee’s explosive words have meaning
CONFIRMATION HEARINGS for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor exposed only one real chink in her well-crafted armor: an apparent inability to grasp that words have meaning.
Of course, judges, of all people, should understand the importance of words and the nuances of the English language. But in order to accept that Judge Sotomayor gave truthful and accurate testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, we must conclude that she has little or no regard for the meanings of words.
For instance, she testified she simply misspoke when she delivered this controversial line in a law school lecture: “I would hope 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 broader content of her lecture makes it clear she was emphasizing the importance of race and gender in judicial decision-making. In another section of the lecture, she elaborates on that theme, stating that she accepts “the proposition that, as Judge Resnik describes it, ‘to judge is to exercise power’ and because as, another former law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, states ‘there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives. …’ I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that — it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., stated the obvious: If he had made such statements from the “perspective” of a white male, his political career would have imploded. But Judge Sotomayor just brushed off her “wise Latina woman” remark and other statements that plainly indicate she has embraced the extreme left’s views on identity group politics. Don’t pay any attention to those words; she didn’t mean them.
Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, skillfully pressed President Obama’s nominee on her professed belief in the importance of group “perspectives.” But she calmly sidestepped the questions, insisting she was misunderstood or that she didn’t articulate her positions clearly enough.
We suspect that Judge Sotomayor will not be misunderstood when she gets to the Supreme Court and begins deciding thorny cases in areas such as abortion, Second Amendment rights, affirmative action and property rights. And we’re pretty sure her words will reflect her own — and President Obama’s — left-wing perspective.
President Obama won the election, and with that, the opportunity to reshape the Supreme Court. Republicans owe some deference to the president’s central role in choosing federal judges. But they don’t have to rubber-stamp judicial nominees who share the president’s belief that “empathy” should take precedence over rational, impartial analysis of the law and the Constitution.
Judge Sotomayor’s record as a judge is troubling. The Supreme Court has overturned or vacated 80 percent of her cases that made it to that level. However, her judicial record should not disqualify her as a Supreme Court nominee.
It’s the plain meaning of her own radical judicial philosophy, which she has expounded on in a variety of settings, that makes her unfit to serve as a Supreme Court justice.
