Sonia Goes to WashingtonSotomayor endures a marathon meet-and-greet in the Senate.
Posted Tuesday, June 2, 2009, at 9:21 PM ETRead more from Slate's coverage of Sonia Sotomayor's nomination.
If there's going to be any unpleasantness over the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, today was not the day for it. The judge made her first visit to Capitol Hill to meet with the senators who will determine her fate, and everyone was on their best behavior. Republican Jeff Sessions, the ranking minority member on the judiciary committee, not only promised her a fair hearing; he promised her a good time. "I hope you will enjoy it," he said, referring to the confirmation hearings. Sotomayor responded, "I think we'll all enjoy it."
For Sotomayor, the day was a chance to make a good first impression. For Republicans, it was another chance to make a better one. No one was calling her a "racist," and Sessions dismissed Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh, who had characterized her that way. "The people out there are not party officials," he said. When the process was over, said Sessions, he hoped people would say, "This is the best hearing we've ever had."
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StumbleUponThe watchwords from Republicans were respect and fair, but that didn't mean they weren't ready to make their case. Sen. John Kyl blasted the president's "empathy" criteria and said he hoped Sotomayor didn't share it. "What this could boil down to—and we'll have to examine very carefully all of the evidence—is what this judge's view of judging is," he said. "Is it the same as the president's, which I reject, or is it more in common with what past judges and justices have done in deciding the cases on the merits rather their own feelings?"
Republicans also tried to put a damper on White House plans to have the Senate vote on her confirmation before the August recess. Republicans say it's not possible to evaluate her long record fairly in such a short time. White House officials say that timeline is necessary so that she can prepare for the October start of the court. September will give her plenty of time, say Republicans—and some Senate Democrats, who say confirmation by August, the Senate's supposed deadline for passing health care legislation, is impossible.
There was still a lot of debate about Sotomayor's comment that in sex- and race-discrimination cases, a Latina woman would more often than not make better decisions than a white man would. Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the judiciary committee, used his early morning meeting to try to clear up any confusion. "Ultimately and completely, a judge has to follow the law no matter what their upbringing has been," he said, quoting her.
But Sen. Lindsey Graham wasn't satisfied. He will meet with Sotomayor tomorrow and wants to ask her about these comments. If he had said the same thing but reversed the order, "I know what would have come my way," he said. "I'm willing to listen to her about that statement. I'm not going to base my decision on that statement, but I think it needs to be addressed, and I think it was inappropriate, and she should apologize, because it offended me. … I want my judge, if I find myself in court, I want to believe that that judge is going to fairly evaluate me, and quite frankly she's got to convince me that if I found myself in litigation with a Latina woman, that I'd get a fair shake."
Graham also will be looking for clues about her judicial temperament. That was an issue important enough to President Obama that he sought information directly during the search process. Graham plans to follow the president's lead. "I like judges that are well received by lawyers," he said. "I don't like bully judges, and her evaluations from those who appeared before her are troubling. She seems at times arrogant and bullying, and I like spirited exchanges. Scalia is a very involved judge, but I don't think he's a bully. So, yes, the evaluations from the members of the bar who appeared before her about demeanor trouble me, and we'll talk about them."
While Sotomayor was mostly engaged in a series of private conversations about the law, she was also witnessing a time-honored Washington circus. If she makes it to the Supreme Court, she will enjoy years isolated from the media and many of the city's rituals. She won't have to give press conferences, and at the State of the Union, she'll be expected to sit motionless, while all around her, politicians lose their heads.
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One facet of Sotomayor's personality that some criticize but that I find a big, big plus is her apparent refusal to value "collegiality"—a trait whose benefit mostly inures to the judges themselves and that sometimes consciously interferes with honest judging—above all else. This is in stark contrast to Diane Wood, who wouldn't be caught dead not proverbially scratching the back of one of her colleagues. (As in the old saying, "I'll scratch your back and you'll scratch mine.")
When several years ago a litigant criticized her colleague Ilana Rovner—who is quoted in the linked-to article as singing the praises of collegiality among the members of her court, as though this attribute, serves the public's interest rather than the personal interests of the judges, and who I now learn introduced Wood to her current husband—for having failed to recuse herself because of a conflict of interest concerning her son's employment at the time and for having failed even to disclose the conflict, Wood threatened sanctions against the litigant for impugning Rovner's integrity. (By then, oddly enough, Rovner had recused herself from the case (without stating a reason for doing so), but the damage already was done.
By the time she recused herself, the case was on appeal for the second time, three years after the first appeal.) But the core principle of collegiality-as-legal-doctrine is that the judicial office is freely used to protect the personal interests of colleagues. After all, the collegial judge never knows when she herself might need the benefits of that custom. (And yes, had Wood been nominated instead of Sotomayor, the matter would have received some public attention. You betcha.)
-- The Fellowship
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