(WASHINGTON) — The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to approve Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor to be the first Hispanic justice.
The committee voted 13-6 Tuesday morning to send Sotomayor's nomination to the full Senate, where she's expected to be confirmed easily next week. (Read "Sonia Sotomayor: The Making of a Judge.")
Just one Republican, South Carolina's Lindsey Graham, joined Democrats in voting for President Barack Obama's first high court nominee. The panel's chairman, Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, called Sotomayor a restrained, fair and impartial judge who has not favored any one group of people over another. But the top Republican, Alabama's Jeff Sessions, said her speeches and some rulings revealed beliefs that conflict with the idea of blind justice and fidelity to the law.
Republicans were divided on the politically perplexing question of how to vote on Sotomayor. Many are eager to please their core supporters by opposing her but fear a backlash by Hispanic voters, a fast-growing part of the electorate, if they do so.
Obama chose Sotomayor to replace retiring Justice David Souter, a liberal named by a Republican president, and she's considered unlikely to alter the high court's ideological split. Sotomayor is the daughter of Puerto Rican parents who was raised in a New York City housing project and educated in the Ivy League. She has served on the federal bench for 17 years. (Read "Why Obama Picked Her.")
Sessions said Sotomayor's writings and speeches amount to "dramatic expressions of an activist view of judging," and added that a few of her rulings sidestepped key constitutional issues and ignored bedrock principles. He said he believed Sotomayor would be a vote for a "new kind of ideological judging."
Grassley said he's not sure Sotomayor understands the rights Americans have under the Constitution, or that she will refrain from expanding or restricting those rights based on her personal preferences. He said he was still haunted by his 1990 vote to confirm Souter, and harbored the same doubts about Sotomayor. (Read "Why Obama Picked Her.")
Obama chose Sotomayor to replace retiring Justice David Souter, a liberal named by a Republican president, and she's considered unlikely to alter the high court's ideological split. Sotomayor is the daughter of Puerto Rican parents who was raised in a New York City housing project and educated in the Ivy League. She has served on the federal bench for 17 years.
Source
Post a Comment
0Comments