Groundbreaker
Sonia Sotomayor is the third woman and first Hispanic to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. The first justice to have her swearing-in televised and the only justice ever opposed by the National Rifle Association. And she’ll get thrown into the deep end early because the court will soon hear a campaign-finance case with broad freedom-of-speech implications in a special summer session. Quite a start for what is likely to be long tenure – she is only 55 – on our highest bench. Considering her sterling academic credentials and a 17-year track record as a district and appellate judge that showed she was both mainstream and moderate, her hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee was unusually thorough and at times contentious. Republicans on the committee failed to establish, although not for lack of trying, that she would bring a political and personal agenda to the bench. They felt she was suspect on gun rights, property rights and reverse discrimination, and while they might disagree with her rulings on those issues, they were, again, within the mainstream. She is no firebrand activist.
But the hearing was really about President Obama’s next nominee if he gets a vacancy. Sotomayor will not alter the balance of the court. The next justice will, flipping what is now generally a 5-to-4 conservative majority.
In a show of party unity, all but nine Republicans voted against her. Sen. John McCain described her as “an immensely qualified candidate” and then voted against her anyway. The “no” votes were a political gamble for the Republicans given the GOP’s shaky standing with Hispanics, but it is an indication that high-court nominations will increasingly be party-line affairs.
In any event, Sotomayor is now our 111th Supreme Court justice, and we hope that in the hermetic atmosphere of the high court she remains, in that endlessly picked-over phrase, a “wise Latina.”