Sotomayor Pledges 'Fidelity to the Law'

Sonia Sotomayor, the first nominee to the Supreme Court by a Democratic president in 15 years, told the Senate Judiciary Committee today, on the opening day of her confirmation hearing, that her judicial philosophy can be distilled to just a few words: "fidelity to the law."








As a federal trial judge and appellate judge during the past 17 years, Sotomayor said, she has sought to "strengthen both the rule of law and faith in the impartiality of our justice system."

Her statement came at the end of the first day of her confirmation hearing, a day filled with opening statements from each senator on the committee, in which they strived to define Sotomayor. Democrats set about portraying her as a seasoned jurist with a "modest" and restrained approach, while Republicans sought to cast doubt on her impartiality, saying her statements and rulings have been unduly influenced by her own background.

Despite the drama and ceremony that accompany any Supreme Court confirmation hearing, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) quickly put the proceedings in context in his opening statement: "Unless you have a complete meltdown," he told the nominee, "you are going to get confirmed."

Today was the first time that Sotomayor, 55, who rose from projects of the South Bronx to a member of U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, has spoken publicly since President Obama selected her May 26, the first Latina nominated to serve on the nation's highest court.

Sotomayor, speaking firmly in a voice tinged with her native Bronx, recounted for the senators her now-familiar biography, the child of poor parents who moved from Puerto Rico. "The progression of my life has been uniquely American," she said.

"Over the past three decades, I have seen our judicial system from a number of different perspectives -- as a big-city prosecutor, a corporate litigator, a trial judge and an appellate judge," Sotomayor said.

She said that she decided more than 450 cases as a federal district court, before her elevation to the appellate court -- a position, she said, in which she has decided "a wide range of constitutional, statutory, and other legal questions."

"Throughout my 17 years on the bench, I have witnessed the human consequences of my decisions," she said. "Those decisions have been made not to serve the interests of any one litigant, but always to serve the larger interest of impartial justice. . . . In each case I have heard, I have applied the law to the facts at hand. My personal and professional experience help me listen and understand, with the law always commanding the result in every case."

Senators will not begin their questioning of Sotomayor, which will form the bulk of the hearing, until Tuesday morning.

For now, Republicans tried to make the first Supreme Court hearing of the Obama administration as much a referendum on the president as on the nominee, 55. Republicans also sought to cut into the political mileage Democrats have accrued through Obama's nominating the first Hispanic to the nation's highest court, with some citing Miguel Estrada, a Hispanic lawyer whose appeals-court nomination by President George W. Bush was blocked by Democrats in 2002 and 2003.

Republicans also emphasized a speech Sotomayor gave at the University of California at Berkeley in 2001, widely cited by her detractors in the weeks since her nomination. In it, she said that she hoped that a "wise Latina" judge might make better decisions than a white man. The committee's ranking Republican, Jeff Sessions (Ala.), said that her remarks in that speech were not an anomaly, saying that Sotomayor had said similar things in public "at least five times over the course of a decade."

And Sessions was one of several Republicans who criticized Sotomayor's role in a case, Ricci v. DeStefano, in which the Supreme Court late last month overturned a decision by three 2nd Circuit judges. The high court ruled that white firefighters had been discriminated against when the city of New Haven, Conn., withdrew a promotional test in which minority candidates scored worse than whites.

"I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for, anyone who will not render justice impartially," Sessions said. "Call it empathy, call it prejudice or call it sympathy, but whatever it is, it's not law," he said. "In truth, it's more akin to politics, and politics has no place in the courtroom."

Democrats countered that Sotomayor's years on the federal bench, first as a U.S. district judge before joining the appellate court in 1998, have been characterized by what Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) her home-state senator, called "judicial modesty."

Schumer said: "Judge Sotomayor puts rule of law above everything else. Given her extensive and even-handed record, I'm not sure how any member of this panel can sit here today and seriously suggest that she comes to the bench with a personal agenda."

Schumer noted that she had dissented from her colleagues on the court less frequently than Samuel A. Alito Jr. had during his years as an appellate judge before he was nominated by Bush and became the last justice confirmed to the Supreme Court, 4 1/2 years ago. That record, the senator said, "shows that she is in the mainstream. She's agreed with Republican colleagues 95 percent of the time. She has ruled for the government in 83 percent of immigration cases against the immigration plaintiff. She has ruled for the government in 92 percent of criminal cases. She has denied race claims in 83 percent of the cases and has split evenly on employment cases between employer and employee."

In a similar vein, Schumer and Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) both predicted that she would prove less ideological on the Supreme Court than Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who had said at his own confirmation hearing in 2005 that a judge's role was to be merely an umpire. Durbin said, "It's hard to see home plate from right field," and added that Roberts's action on the court have been a "triumph of ideology over common sense."

Five minutes before the hearing began this morning, Sotomayor wore a broad smile and a royal blue jacket and black skirt as she walked into the packed hearing room of the Hart Senate Office Building, accompanied by the committee's chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.).

In leading off the hearing, Leahy portrayed Sotomayor as a nominee with an uncommonly extensive judicial résumé. "She is the first nominee in well over a century to be nominated to three different federal judgeships by three different presidents," Leahy said.

And he compared Sotomayor to Thurgood Marshall, the court's first African American justice, and Sandra Day O'Connor, its first female member.

Conservatives and some Republicans, Leahy said, have attempted to "twist her words and her record. . . . Ideological pressure groups have attacked her before the president had even made his selection," Leahy said. "They then stepped up their attacks by threatening Republican senators who do not oppose her.

"In truth," he said, "we do not have to speculate about what kind of a justice she will be because we have seen the kind of judge she has been. She is a judge in which all Americans can have confidence."

Democrats are betting that an overly zealous assault on Sotomayor by Republican senators could anger Latinos and accelerate the shift of Hispanic voters away from the party, particularly in the South and West. Conservatives are hoping to use the Sotomayor hearings as a way to motivate their base if they can successfully portray her as an activist judge whose "empathy" for certain groups guides her rulings more than court precedent or the written law.

Before today, Republican senators had given mixed signals on how hard they plan to press Sotomayor, with supporters saying harsh questioning would be politically risky. But pressure from the conservative base mounted this morning. Jay Sekulow, the influential head of the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, issued a statement saying that the Senate "must fulfill its constitutional role in providing advice and consent and that means asking the tough, in-depth questions about Judge Sotomayor's view of the Constitution and her judicial philosophy."

Sessions was careful not to strike too barbed a tone in his opening statement, saying that the hearing would be "respectful" and would consisted of "a thoughtful dialogue and maybe some disagreements."

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who leads the GOP's campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, cited three speeches Sotomayor has given in recent years in which, he said, she advocated in favor of judges changing the law, even a "radical change," and advanced the idea of foreign courts as basis for domestic rulings.

"We thank you for your candor in these speeches," Cornyn told the nominee. "Not every judicial nominee is so open about their judicial philosophy. Yet many Americans wonder what these various statements mean -- and what you're trying to get at with these remarks. And many more wonder whether you are the kind of judge who will uphold the written Constitution -- or the kind of judge who will veer us even further off course -- and towards new rights invented by judges rather than ratified by the people."

Republicans repeatedly jabbed at Obama. At one point, Graham recalled the president's role in Supreme Court confirmations of the recent past, when he was in the Senate. "When he was here," Graham said of the president, "he set in motion a standard, I thought, that was more about seeking the presidency than being fair to the nominee.

"When he said, 'The critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart,' translated, that means, "I'm not going to vote against my base, because I'm running for president.' " Graham said.

The hearing had barely begun before it was interrupted by a brief protest. As Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) was giving her opening remarks, an abortion protester in the back of the room punctuated the somber quiet by screaming out, "Senator, what about the unborn?" A few seconds later, just before he was promptly hauled out of the room by a security guard, he referred to "unborn Latinos."

According to Sgt. Kimberly Schneider of the U.S. Capitol Police, 48-year-old Robert M. James was charged with disruption of Congress. James, of Centreville, said later that he was trying to remind GOP senators "of their principles," adding, "This is one of these rare moments when attention is focused in a singular way." Standing outside the Hart building alongside noted antiabortion opponent Randall Terry, James said, "the unborn have no one to speak for them. This is our opportunity -- that someone who can speak for them will stand up and defend them."

Almost two hours later, another abortion protester interrupted the opening statement of Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). Andrew R. Beacham, 27, of Indiana, was also charged with disruption of Congress. And in the afternoon, two others tried to disrupt the proceedings as they were leaving the hearing room.

Leahy sharply rebuked the gallery after each outburst, saying at one point, "Judge Sotomayor deserves respect, to be heard. These Senators deserve the respect of being heard."

Sotomayor's handlers said there would be "watch parties" in more than 30 states, with supporters gathering to hear from the woman they hope will replace retiring Justice David H. Souter. In Washington, the Hispanic Bar Association planned to gather at a law office to watch Sotomayor's opening statement.

Yesterday, sources predicted that a surprise could come late today, if several Republican senators announce their support for Sotomayor's nomination. That would effectively seal her appointment to the court and make the only question how many votes she will receive.

Among those who some court watchers say could make an early announcement are Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, the only Latino Republican in the chamber, and Sens. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine.

Meanwhile, both political parties have released a list of witnesses who will appear before the Judiciary Committee later in the week. The Republican witnesses will include a former president of the National Rifle Association, a firefighter from New Haven, Conn., and an antiabortion activist, reinforcing the themes that GOP senators hope to cement as the hearings close by the end of the week. Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, wrote recently in the Washington Times that "Justice Sotomayor's lack of reflection combined with her record of abortion activism shows that, with her on the court, the unborn would be at greater risk than ever before."

The Democratic list includes David Cone, a former Major League Baseball pitcher who watched as Sotomayor helped resolve baseball's strike; Michael R. Bloomberg (I), the mayor of New York; and Michael J. Garcia, a former U.S. attorney appointed by President George W. Bush.

Obama called Sotomayor yesterday after he returned from a three-nation overseas trip, the White House announced. Press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement that Obama "complimented the Judge for making courtesy calls to 89 Senators in which she discussed her adherence to the rule of law throughout her 17 years on the federal bench" and "expressed his confidence that Judge Sotomayor would be confirmed to serve as a Justice on the Supreme Court for many years to come."

Sotomayor is expected to meet for a short time with senators in a closed-door luncheon, most likely on Thursday. The meeting is standard procedure for Supreme Court nominees.

But otherwise, the judge will be before the cameras the entire time.