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Sonia Goes to WashingtonSotomayor endures a marathon meet-and-greet in the Senate.

By John DickersonPosted Tuesday, June 2, 2009, at 9:21 PM ET

Read more from Slate's coverage of Sonia Sotomayor's nomination.

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Perhaps because she is about to get a lifetime exemption from the nutty rituals of Washington, she has to endure a concentrated dose of absurdity. Today was Day One.

A job interview can make anyone nervous. Now imagine you have to walk to the interview through a dog kennel while you're carrying a veal cutlet. (Fox may have this show in development.) Sotomayor's task was to say nothing in public. The press wanted at least one small peep. They yelled question after question as she emerged from her first meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "How was your day?" "How did it go?" Before another meeting, a television producer yelled, "How do you like being called a racist?"

Sotomayor may run a "hot court," but she was emotionless. She smiled, but on a day of serial photo-ops a smile is more of a necessity, like a Senate visitor's pass, than a sign of genuine emotion. Two security guards traveling with her fended off aggressive reporters. One had Sotomayor's same hairstyle and black pinstriped jacket. If things had gotten too hairy, she would have been able to jump in as a stunt double.

Before each meeting with a senator, Sotomayor had to endure the same procedure. Placed in a wing backed chair across from her host, she watched aides open the office door, releasing the cameramen into the room. The herd clambered through the narrow doorway to get the first and best shot. Arms were mangled, faces bruised, and family lineage imperiled. (Down the hall from Sessions' office, kids participating in a Reading Is Fundamental literacy event shouted, "No more monkeys jumping on the bed," as if narrating the scene.)

With the cameras in place, the public small talk started—a brutal thing to endure. Leahy showed Sotomayor pictures of his grandchildren on his desk. His screen saver cycled through photographs of his family and one of the senator arm-in-arm with Bono. The cameras clicked and clicked, taking pictures of the senator's pictures while the judge judged them favorably. "Oh, wow," she said when Leahy pointed out a photo of his grandchildren at the White House Easter Egg Roll. In Reid's office, the judge sat and smiled as the senator referred to her as both an underdog and a top dog.

By the end of the first day, Sotomayor had endured nine meetings in eight hours on the Hill. She'll have to do it all again tomorrow. And if it all goes well, she'll make it to the building (and the courtroom) across the street from the Capitol, where life will be so quiet, she might long for a little of today's mayhem.

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John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at . Follow him on Twitter.

Photograph of Sonia Sotomayor by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

COMMENTS

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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