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Sotomayor ends up with more votes than Samuel Alito and fewer votes than John Roberts and in the end no one is going to remember the margins. She'll now prepare to settle in to the Court, and to a new city, and I'm sure she's already had a peek at some of the briefs in cases she'll begin to help decide when the new term begins in a few weeks.

In some ways this was an easy one for the White House. The president's party controls the Senate by a filibuster-proof majority, the White House selected a nominee with great political symbolism for Hispanics, and Sotomayor had twice been vetted by the Congress over 17 years on the federal bench.

She's not likely to have a huge impact on the Court's ideological makeup because in some ways she's the same sort of moderate liberal that her predecessor, David Souter was. And you can even argue that she is likely to be MORE conservative than he was in certain kinds of cases, like business or law enforcement cases.

It takes brains, temperament and really good timing to become a Supreme Court Justice. The legal landscape is littered with the careers of brilliant jurists who weren't the right person in the right place at the right time. And the Supreme Court has been littered with yahoos who lucked out and squeaked through.

What it takes to "pass" modern-day, post-Bork confirmation hearings, however, is a completely different matter. You don't need candor. You don't need courage. You don't need to be right. You don't even have to pretend that you have all the answers. All you really need is patience, a large bladder, thick skin, and the unwavering strength to sit upright and awake, hour after hour, and speak at great length and in serious, sonorous tones without saying anything at all.

John G. Roberts, Jr. accomplished this arduous if fairly mindless feat in 2005 and is now chief justice of the United States. Samuel A. Alito, Jr. did it in 2006 and he's now an associate justice. And Sonia Sotomayor, a wise Latina woman if there ever were one, has just managed to match the boys. She is on her way to getting, oh, I'd say 70 or so votes for confirmation to become only the third woman in American history to land the law's big prize.

With the main part of the Sotomayor confirmation hearing now complete, with the judge finally off the hot seat, it's fair to say she did everything her compulsive White House handlers had hoped she would. She talked at length to her critics on the Senate Judiciary Committee about her "motivational" speeches. If some of her explanations didn't really make sense—and often they didn't—there isn't anything Senate can do about it anyway. What's left to say after you've said sorry about your many "rhetorical flourishes" that fell flat?

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She wouldn’t commit to lobbying her potential colleagues on the Court about cameras there, she refused to talk about whether she’ll recognize that the 2nd Amendment applies to the states, and she was very careful in answering questions about that takings case—I don’t prejudge cases, she said.


She’s touched upon almost all of the hot-button issues we expected, gun rights, abortion rights, the role of judges and empathy, her Wise Latina comments but mostly only scratching the surface. It’s clear Republicans on the Committee are going to return to those topics as the day wears on.

She hasn’t made any mistakes yet, hasn’t had the meltdown Sen. Graham talked about yesterday. She’s been very cautious and like her recent predecessors gave not a whiff of a hint of a scent of how she might rule in future abortion or gun rights cases.

So far she’s explained patiently her remarks about the role of empathy in decision making, on her Wise Latina comments and other controversial statements but when it comes to questions about how she might handle cases in the future she has been purposely vague and non-committal, just like nominees Roberts and Alito were.

Sotomayor Explains "Wise Latina" Comment

Live Video and Analysis of the hearing

Watch below for continuing live video of Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court confirmation hearings, along with live running minute-by-minute analysis and commentary from CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen and CBS News political consultant John Dickerson via Twitter. (after the jump)

Story: Sotomayor Explains "Wise Latina" Comment

Story: Sotomayor Promises "Fidelity to the Law"

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This story was published in Saturday's edition of the Los Angeles Times

Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court justices jumped the shark a generation ago. Everyone knows it. But no one does anything about it.

The senators make their windy speeches, vote the way they already have determined they will vote and ask questions they know the nominee cannot and will not answer. The hearings have become torpid exercises in political preening, virtually devoid of any substance.

Here are five ways that the White House, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) can try to impose a new order to the proceedings without taking away the Senate's important "advise and consent" role.

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