Senate to Vote Thursday on Sotomayor
Last updated at 9:09 p.m. EDT
The Senate's Democratic women took to the floor Wednesday to highlight the landmark nature of Sonia Sotomayor's impending confirmation as the first Hispanic and third female Supreme Court justice, as Latino leaders stressed the vote's importance to their community, a growing part of the electorate.
The Senate has agreed to vote Thursday on confirming Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
While Republicans lined up to criticize Sotomayor as unfit for the bench, Democrats were preparing to declare political victory this week on confirmation of President Barack Obama's first high court nominee. The Senate continued its debate Wednesday, dominated by GOP charges that Sotomayor would bring bias to the court and assertions from Democrats that she's a mainstream moderate.
But breaking with the vast majority of the GOP, Republican Sen. Kit Bond says he'll support Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. The retiring Missouri senator says he disagrees with some of Sotomayor's rulings and statements, but that she's a well-qualified jurist. He becomes the seventh Republican to publicly announce he will support President Barack Obama's first high court nominee.
Nearly three-quarters of Republican senators oppose Sotomayor, leaving just a handful breaking with their party to join Democrats in backing her. That's still more than enough to easily confirm the judge, barring a surprise turn of events.
Most GOP senators, initially worried that opposing Sotomayor could alienate Hispanic voters, have nonetheless sided with their conservative base in branding her unacceptable for the high court.
As a succession of Democratic women senators delivered speeches describing Sotomayor as a role model for women and minorities everywhere, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Senate's loan Hispanic Democrat, joined Hispanic leaders gathered just outside the Senate chamber to deliver a similar message.
Meanwhile, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary Committee chairman, defended both Sotomayor and Obama against GOP criticism of their stated views that judges' backgrounds and life experiences are important to their jobs.
"Real-world experience, real-world judging, an awareness of the real-world consequences of decisions are vital aspects of the law, and here we have a nominee who has had more experience as a federal judge than any nominee in decades," Leahy said.
Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Republican and his party's pointman on Sotomayor, called her a devotee of an approach that heeds "the seductive siren call of judicial activism" and is contrary to the "classical underpinnings" of the nation's legal system.
"Judge Sotomayor's expressed judicial philosophy rejects openly the ideal of impartial and objective judging. Instead, her philosophy embraces the impact that background, personal experience, sympathies, gender and prejudices - these are her words have on judging," Sessions said Tuesday.
Sotomayor, 55, is the daughter of Puerto Rican parents who was raised in a South Bronx housing project and educated in the Ivy League before going on to success in the legal profession and then the federal bench. Obama chose her to replace retiring Justice David Souter, a liberal named by a Republican president, and she's not expected to alter the court's ideological balance.
Still, Republicans call her an activist who would bring bias to the high court, pointing to a few rulings in which they argue she showed disregard for gun rights, property rights and job discrimination claims by white employees. They're also unsatisfied with Sotomayor's explanation of a 2001 speech - similar to comments she's made throughout her career - in which she said she hoped a "wise Latina" would usually make better decisions than a white male.
Democrats point instead to a long record of rulings in which Sotomayor has reached the same conclusions as judges who are considered more conservative. They call her a moderate who is restrained in her legal interpretations and argue that her controversial remarks - while perhaps worded inartfully - show nothing more than a belief that diverse experiences help a judge see all sides of a case.