Senate Judiciary ranking member Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., pressed Sonia Sotomayor about speeches in which she questioned judges' ability to be fully objective. In 1999, she called impartiality "an aspiration rather than a description" and said "our experiences as women will in some way affect our decisions."

Sotomayor stopped short of those claims today, saying personal views have never affected her decisions and repeatedly saying her "record of 17 years" on the bench shows faithfulness to the law.

While leaving room for judges' experience to affect the evaluation of arguments, Sotomayor said recognition of bias is necessary to overcome it. "We have to recognize those feelings and put them aside," she said.

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