With Sonia Sotomayor's swearing-in as the 111th justice of the Supreme Court, the Ninth Justice blog is going dark, but its resources, news updates and analysis will live on in the archives. Visit some of the highlights below.
Analysis from Stuart Taylor Jr.
Video: Taylor Looks Back On Hearings
Before & After: David Souter And Sonia Sotomayor
Q&A: Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Q&A: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
Q&A: Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska
Q&A: Sen. Jeffrey Sessions, R-Ala.
Q&A: Former Sen. John Danforth, R-Mo.
Making The Grade: Experts Evaluate Hearing Performances
Sotomayor's Princeton Awakening
Book Excerpt: Advice & Consent by Lee Epstein and Joseph A. Segal
Book Excerpt: The Next Justice by Christopher Eisgruber
Sotomayor In Context: A Moderately Liberal Nominee
Sotomayor In Context: The Court's Conservative Bent
Sotomayor In Context: How Long A Ride?
Sotomayor In Context: Federal Bench Experience
Sotomayor In Context: Unprecedented Input From Interest Groups
(Credit: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)
Judge Sonia Sotomayor is sworn in with the Judicial Oath in the East Conference room of the Supreme Court this morning by Chief Justice John Roberts as her mother Celina holds the Bible and her brother Juan Luis looks on.
President Obama said he was "very happy" with the 68-31 vote by which Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed, with nine Republicans breaking to join a unanimous Democrat conference -- minus the ailing Edward Kennedy, D-Mass. -- to support the nominee.
But according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll released Wednesday, only 27 percent of Republicans said the Senate should confirm Sotomayor while 58 percent opposed the nomination. And just 22.5 percent of Senate Republicans eventually voted to confirm her.
How bipartisan was the vote? A closer look at which senators voted yes or no reveals that most who are seeking re-election or election to another office voted against Sotomayor's nomination.
Of the GOP senators standing for re-election next year, all 12 voted against Sotomayor. Sens. Robert Bennett of Utah and John McCain of Arizona are facing primary challenges from conservative rivals. Although they have no declared challengers, Sens. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and David Vitter of Louisiana may wish to preemptively discourage any potential primary opponents.
Of the seven Republicans likely to retire between now and 2010, four voted yes -- Sens. Christopher (Kit) Bond of Missouri, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Mel Martínez of Florida and George Voinovich of Ohio. Voting no were retiring Sens. Sam Brownback of Kansas, Jim Bunning of Kentucky and Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. Brownback and Hutchison intend to run for governor in their respective states.
In other words, four of the nine GOP senators who voted yes will be retiring in 2010.
Continue reading Parsing The GOP's Sotomayor Vote.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has used debate over Sonia Sotomayor to argue that Democratic opposition to Bush administration judicial nominees reduced the deference GOP senators are now obliged to give a president's judicial picks, freeing them to oppose nominees on philosophical grounds.
Asked after Sotomayor's confirmation Thursday if he felt his argument caught on with GOP colleagues, who voted 31-9 against Sotomayor's confirmation, McConnell said he was pleased with the way his caucus approached the vote.
"This was an issue upon which every senator tries establishing their own criteria for judging a nominee. And it's kind of shifted over the years from a period during which qualifications alone -- where'd you go to school, how long have you practiced and that sort of thing -- was viewed by the vast majority senators as the standard," McConnell said. "It led to nominees becoming something of a political football."
"I am proud of how the Republican conference handled this nomination respectfully, thoughtfully. I think we restored to some degree the reputation of the Senate in dealing with nominees, which had been significantly damaged, in my view, by the treatment of some of our nominees by the other side. Hopefully we'll continue to achieve a level of civility and respect in dealing with nominees in the future."
In the latest edition of Hotline TV, John Mercurio and Steve Shepard give their take on Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation and talk about who else came out on top.
• The Legal Times reports that Sonia Sotomayor was in New York "with more than a hundred colleagues and friends at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit when the Senate roll call put her over the top for confirmation as the next justice on the Supreme Court."
• USA Today rounds up jubilant reaction from Hispanics, including this moment: "At the moment of Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation as the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court, Carmen Garcia cried, hard."
• "Now comes the hard part," the New York Times reports in an analysis. "The volume and difficulty of the work, and the task of fitting into a storied institution populated by strong and idiosyncratic personalities, has unnerved even judges with distinguished records on lower courts, fancy credentials and ample self-confidence."
• Sotomayor's "background will probably affect her thinking and influence her decisions in ways that were hardly mentioned in the Senate fight," the Los Angeles Times reports as it outlines ways in which Sotomayor brings a unique perspective to the court. For example, "she will be the only justice whose first language is not English. She has had diabetes since childhood -- a medical condition classified as a disability under federal law. She was raised in a Bronx housing project where drugs were more common than Ivy League college success. And the 111th justice is a divorced woman with no children."
• NationalJournal.com compares Sotomayor to her predecessor, David Souter, and asks: "Is there any chance these two tight-lipped jurists could share a propensity for disappointing their supporters?"
Commentary
• The Washington Post cheers Sotomayor's confirmation but is left wondering "what kind of justice" she will be "now that the burdens of precedent are no longer absolute."
• The Wall Street Journal commends Republicans for a confirmation process that "was conducted respectfully and with a cool-tempered focus on her Constitutional philosophy," though it "can't help but contrast her treatment with the way Democrats smeared and filibustered appellate-court nominee Miguel Estrada in 2001."
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., during the Sotomayor hearings. (Credit: Karen Bleier, AFP/Getty Images)
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., was simply in the right spot at the right time. The most junior member of the Senate presided over the historic roll call vote of Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation Thursday because it was part of his regular rotation, which happens to be on Thursdays, said a spokesman for Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
"It was an honor," Franken said soon after the vote. "It was definitely an honor." Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said that "he did a great job."
This was only the freshman's second time presiding over the chamber, according to Franken spokeswoman Jess McIntosh. While new senators get some run-throughs on the procedures, he did get plenty of help from the floor staff.
Franken lucked out on presiding over a historic vote -- both in substance but also in protocol. Apart from a few late-arrivers, all senators were seated at their desks as the roll call began, a rare occurrence that only happens for a handful of votes, including impeachment, high court nominations and other notable nominations such as that of Hillary Rodham Clinton for secretary of State.
So, what did Franken preside over his very first time? It was a debate on the highway trust fund extension, exactly one week ago.
(Credit:Alex Wong/Getty Images)
President Obama called Sonia Sotomayor's rise to the Supreme Court an "American journey" that shows the country is "breaking yet another barrier." He spoke to the media from the Diplomatic Reception Room following the confirmation vote, which he described as affirmation that Sotomayor has what it takes to serve as justice. Asked by a reporter whether he's happy with 68 "yea" votes, Obama answered: "I'm very happy."
His complete remarks are after the jump.
Continue reading Obama: U.S. Is 'Breaking Yet Another Barrier'.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., reacts passionately to a question about President Obama's next Supreme Court nominee as Judiciary member Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., looks on. (Credit: Amy Harder)
The Senate had barely finished its roll call vote on Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation before reporters started asking about President Obama's next nominee to the Supreme Court. When Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy was asked during a press conference whether he would advise Obama to nominate anyone he wants since Republicans have signaled they will vote against anyone he picks, the Vermont Democrat slammed his fists down on the podium in response.
"I would advise the president do exactly -- exactly -- what he did this time: Pick the most qualified person possible and nominate them," Leahy said in a press conference just minutes after the Senate voted 68-31 to confirm Sotomayor. "That's what he did, and that's what he will do with another vacancy." Leahy was accompanied by nine of his Democratic colleagues, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.
The White House was a bit more restrained in its response. In the daily briefing today ahead of the vote, press secretary Robert Gibbs said that he didn't "have any news to report on what happens if there is another vacancy."
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., addresses a crowd assembled outside the Capitol Building Wednesday afternoon to rally for Sotomayor's confirmation. (Credit: Amy Harder)
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island was one of the few Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee whom liberal legal scholars said embraced a more progressive judicial philosophy during Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings (subscription). NationalJournal.com's Amy Harder spoke with Whitehouse this morning about the larger battle between conservatives and liberals over the judiciary. Edited excerpts follow.
NJ: Why do you think it is important to embrace a philosophy that counters what the Republicans have put forth?
Whitehouse: I think the backdrop to the Sotomayor confirmation is a larger struggle over the direction and control of the American judiciary. Part of why this interests me is that I've been watching it for years. The Republicans have done this in relatively plain view. They've very clearly made it their express purpose to find and groom conservative judges and put them on the court for the -- again -- often express purpose of influencing decisions and changing the direction of the American judiciary. So, the sort of manipulative hand of the Republican Party in judicial nominations is almost uncontested at this point. They would phrase it in a different way but they'd admit that they're doing that.
That then takes you back to the contest over the Framing. And, I think that on that, they're just plain wrong and it's harmful to the judiciary and harmful to American democracy to let that theory [originalism], which is in many respects a cover story for the strategic plan to influence and ultimately control the judiciary, to gain headway. It's wrong both as history and as justice.
NJ: How do you think Democrats and Sotomayor herself did in countering the philosophy Republicans have embraced and laid out to the American people?
Whitehouse: I don't think that she did. Her job was to present herself as a mainstream judge and to avoid controversy. And, I think she was very successful at achieving those goals, which left it to others to make the larger point.
NJ: And, by others, do you mean...
Whitehouse: Us.
NJ: Did you and your Democratic colleagues do that?
Whitehouse: I think we did OK. We had two jobs to do. One was to try to help confirm Judge Sotomayor. And there's a tendency in support of that purpose to try to sort of lower the temperature in the proceedings, avoid disagreement and just get her through. The second is to try to make the larger point or rebut the Republican judicial theory that supports their efforts to appoint and control the judiciary. They're a little bit in conflict with each other.
Continue reading Whitehouse: SCOTUS Confirmation 'Most Political Thing In Washington'.
(Credit: Julie Abramson)
Before David Souter's confirmation hearings in the summer of 1990, he so worried conservatives that White House Chief of Staff John Sununu had to mount a last-minute campaign assuring them that the New Hampshire judge would be a reliable vote for the right. During his testimony, Souter frustrated Republican Sen. Charles Grassley by telling him that "courts must accept their own responsibility for making a just society."
Sonia Sotomayor hasn't rattled liberals in quite the same way, but she, like Souter, didn't spend much time at the confirmation hearings defending her nominating party's judicial philosophy. Is there any chance these two tight-lipped jurists could share a propensity for disappointing their supporters?
Probably not, legal scholars say. What Sotomayor said during her confirmation "would not disable or disqualify her from taking a bolder position or a more progressive position if and when she becomes a justice," said Robert O'Neil, who clerked for Justice William Brennan and is founding director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression at the University of Virginia.
Read the complete story and view the latest in our ongoing political caricature series.
Updated at 4:03 p.m. on Aug. 6.
The Senate voted 68-31 to confirm Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court this afternoon, clearing the way for her to become the nation's first Hispanic justice. Nine Republicans joined the entire Democratic caucus -- save ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts -- in voting yes.
Sotomayor will be sworn in on Saturday.
The newest member of the Senate, Democrat Al Franken of Minnesota, presided. Leading up to the largely anticlimactic vote, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., took to the floor to reiterate all the talking points they have been emphasizing for the past 73 days -- since Sotomayor's nomination on May 26. Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, wrapped up the vote with closing remarks.
Our sister blog, Hotline On Call, has tallied up some notable numbers of this week's full floor debate. A total of 54 senators spoke. Of those lawmakers, 30 were Democrats, 22 were Republicans and two were independents who caucus with the Democrats. More than twice as many senators spoke in favor of President Obama's nominee as spoke in opposition.
Overall, senators spent 18 hours this week debating the nomination. Sessions took to the floor the most, speaking six separate times.
In a statement announcing his support for Sonia Sotomayor, Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, emphasized that the Second Amendment is important to his constituents, but that he is "convinced she will not be an activist justice." He added, "I believe she will continue her practice of upholding the law and protecting our constitutional rights without bringing personal bias to her decisions."
Begich had been targeted by conservative interest groups as a potentially vulnerable red state Democrat, and fellow Alaskan Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, said he has likely been facing the same pressure from his constituents as she has on the issue.
Begich, who was elected last year, is known as being pro-gun. His "yea" vote is another sign of the National Rifle Association's diminished influence over this nomination, even after it announced its intent to score the vote.
With Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio announcing this afternoon that he will vote in favor of Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation, all Republican votes are accounted for: Nine will vote yes, and 31 will vote no.
The White House may tout this as a "bipartisan" victory, but conservative interest groups also see it as a victory for them. Curt Levey, executive director of the Committee for Justice, said the goal was to break 30 no votes, and that's just what happened Wednesday night when Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska announced her intent to oppose Sotomayor -- the last Republican to do so.
In his remarks today, Voinovich continued a pattern among Republicans: denouncing the ideological considerations that Barack Obama cited in voting against George W. Bush's Supreme Court nominees as a senator, yet still expressing support for Sotomayor. "If I applied President Obama's standard, I would not be voting for Judge Sotomayor, his nominee," Voinovich said. "The president was wrong. His standard makes the whole nominations process an exercise in partisan politics."
Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, a Democrat up for re-election in a conservative state, also announced this morning that she intends to vote yes. In her speech, Lincoln said that she has "heard from a number of Arkansans, including those in our legal community, who have expressed strong support for Judge Sotomayor, emphasizing her unique background, impressive resume and solid judicial record." Conservative interest groups saw Lincoln as potentially vulnerable on Second Amendment issues, but that didn't seem to resonate with her: She didn't mention the issue once in her speech.
The final vote could be 68-31 if all remaining Democrats vote yes (except the ailing Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts). Robert Byrd of West Virginia, who has been ill, is expected to attend, said Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. The office of Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., who has been hospitalized with a broken leg, said she will be voting today.
"American law does not permit the use of foreign law or international law to interpret the Constitution," Judge Sonia Sotomayor declared at one point in her confirmation testimony last month.
"Foreign law cannot be used as a holding or precedent or to bind or to influence the outcome of a legal conclusion interpreting the Constitution," she asserted at another point.
"I will not use foreign law to interpret the Constitution," she said at a third point.
But there was much less than meets to eye to Sotomayor's apparently categorical assertions. They seemed to say that she would never engage in what has become the five more liberal justices' practice of relying in part on foreign and international law to interpret the Constitution. But it's clear when one reads all the way through her various, somewhat muddled statements on the subject that she would do just that.
The key to the apparent contradiction is Sotomayor's redefinition of the word "use." It calls to mind Bill Clinton's classic word game: "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."
Sotomayor's statements that she would not "use" foreign law in constitutional interpretation turn out to mean only that she would not use it "in the sense of relying on decisions of foreign courts as binding or controlling precedent" (emphasis added), as she specified in her post-testimony, off-camera answers to senators' written questions.
That's a little bit like a baseball pitcher vowing not to "use" knuckleballs to win a game, when all he means is that he won't rely exclusively on knuckleballs, but rather will throw some fastballs and curveballs too.
Continue reading Sotomayor, Foreign Law And The Constitution.
Updated at 11:39 a.m. on Aug. 6.
Democrat Mark Begich is one of the few senators who haven't announced their votes on Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation. His fellow Alaskan, Lisa Murkowski, says the wait can't be pleasant.
Murkowski, a Republican, announced on the Senate floor Wednesday that her constituents' "overwhelming concern" on their right to bear arms compelled her to vote no. Begich, a newly elected Democrat in a conservative state, could be facing even more pressure, she noted later in an interview with NationalJournal.com.
Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative Committee for Justice, said voting against confirmation "would be a great way to show that he is not another Eastern liberal, that he hasn't been captured by Eastern liberals." His organization has been running ads in Alaska targeting both senators. In addition, the National Rifle Association is scoring senators based on their confirmation votes.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told NationalJournal.com that it's possible a red state Democrat could vote no because of Second Amendment issues. "I think it's possible, and I think it would be a very strong signal about how politicized this process has become," Whitehouse said. Republicans want Sotomayor "to be an advocate for the expansion of the Second Amendment," he said. He added that the "fact that the NRA is involved pressing it only adds an exclamation point to it."
Begich's office told the Anchorage Daily News that he likely won't announce his vote until the official vote today, slated for 3 p.m. So, could he be the lone Democrat voting against Sotomayor's nomination? "That I don't know," Murkowski told NationalJournal.com. "... But if I have been receiving this kind of input from folks back home, I'm sure he has as well."
UPDATE: The original version of this report listed Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., as undecided. She announced she would vote for Sotomayor's confirmation minutes after this report was posted.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said on the Senate floor Wednesday night that her constituents' "overwhelming concern" about Second Amendment issues compelled her to vote against Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation. But that doesn't mean she thinks it was appropriate for the National Rifle Association to score the vote. Murkowski also speculated that Alaska's other senator, Democrat Mark Begich, is facing a similar amount of pressure from constituents on the same issue; he is one of just a few Democrats who have not announced their votes.
NationalJournal.com's Amy Harder spoke with Murkowski on Wednesday night. Excerpts of the interview follow.
NJ: You kept reiterating how important your constituents' concerns were. What were their primary worries?
Murkowski: I would say that the overwhelming concern coming from people back at home was specific to the Second Amendment -- a great deal of concern about where they felt Judge Sotomayor might take the protections that we recognized or provided under the Second Amendment.
NJ: Toward the end of your remarks, you said that your vote was not influenced by interest groups. I'm assuming you were referring to, among others, the National Rifle Association. Does the organization have any indirect influence on your vote, insofar as many gun owners are active in the NRA?
Murkowski: We were hearing from our constituents on this issue long before the NRA weighed in with their letter. And I will tell you, I've had conversations with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. I've had conversations with people that are supporting Judge Sotomayor and opposing Judge Sotomayor. And those of us who represent constituents that are very protective about the Second Amendment right, I think it's fair to say that we are -- I am a bit concerned that the NRA weighed in and said they were going to score this. I don't think that was appropriate.
NJ: Why?
Murkowski: Because a vote on a Supreme Court justice, in my mind, should be free from those political interest groups that are going to pressure you and you're thinking, 'Oh gosh, it's going to ruin my score with the NRA,' or whatever group it is. That should not ever factor in when it is a vote of this consequence. I don't have any objection of them stating their position just as any other group would weigh in and say 'we support' or 'we oppose,' but this whole notion of scoring the vote -- it's my understanding that they have never weighed in and scored a vote. They should not have done it in this occasion.
NJ: Your fellow senator, Mark Begich, is one of a few Democrats yet to announce how they're going to vote. Do you think he is going to face similar pressure?
Murkowski: I can tell you that the feedback that we have gotten from people from this state has been overwhelming on this. I have to figure if they're sending messages to me, they're also pushing the send button to Senator Begich. I am quite sure that he is hearing from Alaskans who are quite -- they're really plugged in on certain issues, and certainly a nomination to the Supreme Court justice is right up there.
NJ: Do you think he would be the one Democrat to vote "no"?
Murkowski: That I don't know. That I don't know. I haven't heard whether he is going to be speaking to it, but if I have been receiving this kind of input from folks back home, I'm sure he has as well.
NJ: Your new position as the vice chairwoman of the Senate Republican Conference has put you in one of the key leadership positions. Conservatives say they have been watching how you were going to vote closely --
Murkowski: I think it's only because I'm the only one who was keeping it a secret. Everybody else blabbed, so there was no mystery there [laughs].
NJ: Has this new position put you in a role where you feel a bigger responsibility to represent the party's larger goals?
Murkowski: With this nomination that we had before us, I didn't survey the other folks on the leadership team to see where they were going. I paid attention to what everyone was doing and read their comments as we were developing the response to be delivered tonight. But I will tell you, it is such an important issue back home. For me, it doesn't make any difference whether I'm in leadership or I'm low man on the totem pole, this is something that I have to represent my constituents first.
• "Sonia Sotomayor stands on the verge of making history as the Supreme Court's first Hispanic justice, despite staunch opposition from Republicans who call her ill-suited for the bench," AP reports.
• Senate Majority Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday night on the Senate floor that the final vote on Sotomayor will be at 3 p.m. today.
• The vote will "likely land somewhere between the fairly bipartisan 78-22 vote that confirmed Chief Justice John Roberts in September 2005 and the much more partisan vote of 58-42 that confirmed Justice Samuel Alito in January 2006," The Hill reports. "Democrats split evenly, 22-22, on Roberts, but only four supported Alito and 40 opposed him."
• "Overwhelming Republican opposition... widens a partisan gulf that has lawmakers voting on ideology rather than qualifications," Bloomberg reports.
• "With the outcome of the Senate's vote preordained, senators of both political parties used a long day and night of debate over President Obama's first Supreme Court nominee to try to advance their larger goals," the Washington Post reports.
• "Democratic senators and leaders of Hispanic organizations sent a message to Republicans" Wednesday: "Their votes on" Sotomayor's "confirmation will matter," NationalJournal.com reports. "'To say that you cannot vote for this qualified Latina to be on the United States Supreme Court sends a message to us as a community that we will not forget,' said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., prompting the crowd -- assembled as part of a rally hosted by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. -- to erupt in cheers."
• Politico has video from the rally Wednesday.
• "National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) dismissed as 'Democratic cheerleading' the idea that voting against" Sotomayor's confirmation "will negatively impact the standing of his party with Hispanics," the Washington Post reports.
Continue reading Top Nomination News.
Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., addresses a crowd assembled outside the Capitol Building. (Credit: Amy Harder)
Democratic senators and leaders of Hispanic organizations sent a message to Republicans today: Their votes on Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation will matter.
"To say that you cannot vote for this qualified Latina to be on the United States Supreme Court sends a message to us as a community that we will not forget," said Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., prompting the crowd -- assembled as part of a rally hosted by Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md. -- to erupt in cheers.
Menendez continued: "We know there are enough senators, including some of our Republican colleagues, who have set aside the pressures -- the pressures of the [National Rifle Association], the pressures of their leadership -- to join us."
Janet Murguia, president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza, took to the podium and touted the historical nature of this nomination. She reiterated the message Menendez sent to the almost 30 Republicans who are lining up against Sotomayor's nomination: "We will remember this," Murguia said. "This vote will matter."
Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Charles Schumer of New York and Cardin took part in the rally as well. While Democrats have held numerous press conferences touting the nominee, this is one of the first rallies -- if not the first -- held in honor of Sotomayor. A crowd of 100 or more gathered in Upper Senate Park, just off New Jersey Avenue. Many of the attendees, holding signs and cheering throughout the rally, were representing liberal interest groups like the Service Employees International Union and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
During the rally, Republicans were taking to the floor inside the Capitol Building explaining why they were voting against Sotomayor. Sens. Pat Roberts of Kansas, Roger Wicker of Mississippi and John Cornyn of Texas were among the anti-Sotomayor speakers.
Sen. Christopher (Kit) Bond of Missouri also spoke and announced he will vote "yes", joining six other GOP lawmakers who have already pledged to do so. "I could easily say, as Senator [Barack] Obama said, that I disagree with a nominee's judicial approach and that allows me to oppose the nominee of a different party," Bond said on the floor. "Luckily for President Obama, I do not agree with Senator Obama.... I agree that Judge Sotomayor has proven herself a well-qualified jurist."
More than 200 interest groups have submitted testimony in support of Sonia Sotomayor -- eclipsing the next-most-praised Supreme Court nominees 10 times over. Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas had previously shared the record, with 21 interest groups in support of each judge during their nomination.
Just eight groups submitted testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to Sotomayor, compared with 66 filing against Samuel Alito in 2005. The last nominees chosen by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, didn't trigger nearly as much interest group attention: Ruth Bader Ginsburg motivated 10 groups to submit testimony and Stephen Breyer only six.
The chance to put the first Latina on the high court has no doubt contributed to the unusual level of interest, as did Obama's popularity on the left and the Democrats' first chance at a Supreme Court appointment since 1994. But the heightened involvement from interest groups is also a product of convenience: More than they have in the past, groups added their names to joint letters of support, some of which were signed by dozens of organizations. "It's easy to attach themselves to a letter," said Jeffrey Segal, a political science professor at Stony Brook University who compiled the data included in this graph. "There's no cost for them to do that."
The increased politicization of the Supreme Court confirmation process also contributes to the numbers. "It's an easy way for groups to rev up their base and to send out letters asking for support," Segal said. "It becomes a way for these groups to raise their visibility."
Editor's note: This is the fifth in a series examining historical data from a database compiled by Northwestern law professor Lee Epstein and her colleagues.
Sen. Christopher (Kit) Bond of Missouri today became the seventh Republican to announce he will vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor.
Deploring the partisanship that has engulfed recent Supreme Court nominations, Bond noted he has voted to confirm both conservative and liberal nominees. "I hope those votes do not reflect a time that has slipped away, when partisanship did not infect every facet of our political life," he said in a floor speech. While disagreeing with several of Sotomayor's decisions, especially those involving New Haven, Conn., firefighters and gun rights, "I do agree that Judge Sotomayor has proven herself a well-qualified jurist." Bond said if he and Republicans want more conservative jurists "the best way to ensure that we have conservative judges on the bench is to work to see that we elect presidents who will nominate them."
Sen. John McCain, pictured with President Obama in June, criticized the president
Tuesday over Samuel Alito's Supreme Court confirmation process as a vote on Sonia Sotomayor approaches this week. (Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
As the full Senate began debate on Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, NationalJournal.com's Amy Harder spoke briefly with Arizona Republican John McCain, who announced his intent to vote no on Monday. He said he isn't concerned about alienating Hispanic voters, despite warnings from his more moderate colleagues that that's exactly what he and other Republicans are doing with their "no" votes.
McCain also denounced the politicization of the Supreme Court confirmation process -- and took a jab at his 2008 presidential opponent, Barack Obama, for being "one of the major contributors to that."
NJ: Are you concerned about alienating Hispanic voters in opposing Sotomayor?
McCain: My concern is that we appoint the most qualified people to the United States Supreme Court that I feel will act in accordance with the Constitution. I have no other considerations.
NJ: Hispanics have been increasingly identifying themselves with the Democratic Party; that doesn't raise any concerns with you?
McCain: I have always believed that I needed to do what's right, just as I believed that I had to what's right on immigration reform, just as I believed I had to do what's right on most every other issue.
NJ: In your official remarks Monday, you hearkened back to the Democrats' successful filibuster of appellate nominee Miguel Estrada in 2001. Throughout this nomination, Hispanic groups have said that Republicans should be supporting this nomination, just as Hispanics supported Estrada back then.
McCain: I didn't see any advocacy for Judge Estrada at that time, but maybe I didn't detect it.
NJ: What's your comment about Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., voting in favor of Sotomayor's confirmation?
McCain: I respect him. I respect all the views of all my fellow senators.
NJ: Do you think the process has become more politicized?
McCain: I think it became politicized a long time ago when then-Senator Obama vowed to filibuster Judge [Samuel] Alito and came back and tried to mount a filibuster against Judge Alito. I think it became politicized a long time ago, and then-Senator Obama was one of the major contributors to that.
Olympia Snowe said today that her Republican colleagues' pending "no" votes on Sonia Sotomayor raise "a serious concern" about alienating their Hispanic constituencies. The Maine moderate was among the first GOP lawmakers to say she would vote yes, joining Mel Martinez of Florida and Richard Lugar of Indiana on July 17.
Snowe told reporters that voting for Sotomayor "would have certainly been an avenue for appealing to the Hispanic community, where we did poorly in the last election. I think we can ill afford to lose their support in the future when we're attempting to rebuild the Republican Party nationally," she said.
So far, 28 Republicans have announced they will vote against Sotomayor's confirmation. Many have recognized the historic nature of the high court's first Hispanic nominee even as they explained why they would not vote for her.
Keep tabs on which senators have committed to yes or no votes with NationalJournal.com's Vote Tracker.
• "The Senate on Tuesday began the final leg of Supreme Court hopeful Sonia Sotomayor's 10-week confirmation process with Democrats and Republicans laying down rhetorical markers for a two-day floor debate that will do nothing to change the outcome," Roll Call (subscription) reports.
• AP has video from Tuesday.
• "The Senate is continuing a history-making debate on Sotomayor, dominated by Republican charges that she would bring bias to the court and assertions from Democrats that she's a mainstream moderate," AP reports.
• "Almost 30 lawmakers are expected to take the floor in coming days to criticize the nominee and perhaps lay down a marker in advance of the next Supreme Court vacancy," the Los Angeles Times reports.
• "Nearly three-quarters of GOP senators have lined up against Sotomayor, including John Ensign of Nevada, who said he would vote against her because of concerns that she would not uphold the rights of gun owners or be impartial in rendering decisions," NPR reports. "Arizona's John McCain, who is also from a state with a large Hispanic population, likewise plans to oppose the 55-year-old jurist."
• Keep tabs on which senators have committed to yes or no votes with NationalJournal.com's Vote Tracker.
Continue reading Top Nomination News.
The Senate began debate this afternoon on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, with Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., saying he wants to make the confirmation vote the last one senators take before recessing.
Reid said he plans to hold votes on expansion of the "cash for clunkers" program and on a bill to promote travel to the United States, before ending the summer work session with the Sotomayor vote.
Democrats worked Tuesday to complete unanimous consent agreements on those two bills, though it is uncertain if there will be time for the travel promotion measure.
Sotomayor's confirmation will most likely occur Thursday, Senate leadership aides, though Friday is possible. Based on senators' announcements, she will likely get votes from all Democrats and from six to 10 Republicans.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor has not defended her most widely criticized decision -- the one rejecting a discrimination lawsuit by 17 white firefighters, and one Hispanic, against the city of New Haven, Conn. -- as a just or fair result.
That would have been an uphill battle: Polls in June showed that huge majorities of the public wanted the Supreme Court to reverse Sotomayor's decision.
And as I've explained elsewhere, although the Supreme Court split 5-4 in ruling for the firefighters in Ricci v. DeStefano, all nine justices rejected the specific legal rule applied by Sotomayor's three-judge panel. That rule would allow employers to deny promotions after the fact to those who did best on any measure of qualifications -- no matter how job-related and racially neutral -- on which blacks or Hispanics did badly.
Instead of defending her panel's quota-friendly rule and its harsh impact on the high-scoring firefighters, Sotomayor and her supporters have argued that she essentially had no choice. The rule that her panel applied had been dictated, they say, by three precedents of her own court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.
Some critics have expressed skepticism about this claim, but the media have shed little light on its plausibility. I seek to shed some below.
Continue reading Did Precedent Make Sotomayor Rule Against Ricci?.
• "As the Senate begins debate today on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with the outcome assured, the only remaining questions are whether the National Rifle Assn. can claim to have swayed votes against her and whether President Obama can claim a victory for bipartisanship," the Los Angeles Times reports.
• Senators will "begin a highly orchestrated floor debate expected to be long on political posturing but short on substance or suspense," Roll Call (subscription) reports.
• "Democratic Senate leaders are planning to make the vote on Sotomayor the last thing lawmakers do before leaving town for a month-long recess," USA Today reports.
• "Republicans have lined up almost solidly against" Obama's "nominee, taking what strategists in both parties call a steep political risk in opposing Sotomayor, although a handful of GOP senators are siding with Democrats to support her," AP reports.
Continue reading Top Nomination News.
With formerly undecided Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and John McCain, R-Ariz., announcing today that they intend to vote yes and no, respectively, on Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation, a vote close to the party line is becoming increasingly likely.
But don't tell the White House, where the buzzword "bipartisan" has adhered to Sotomayor's confirmation, seemingly out of habit. Press secretary Robert Gibbs even cited Sotomayor's nomination as an example of bipartisanship on Friday.
Asked in a press briefing about President Obama's reliance on Democrats in office, Gibbs reeled off some examples of bipartisanship in the capital -- beginning with the Supreme Court nominee. "Well, I mean, I think if you look at -- I think you've seen Republicans come out for Judge Sotomayor," he said.
During another briefing on Thursday, Gibbs took questions directly on the small amount of GOP support. His word choice then was less positive and more dismissive, instead focusing on her judicial experience.
"Without getting into whether or not we're disappointed, I think the president believes, rightly, as many have said, Democrat and Republican, that this is a judge with a tremendous amount of legal experience as a prosecutor, as a judge on two different levels of federal court; somebody who has that very background that is eminently qualified to serve as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court and hopes that she's evaluated that way," Gibbs said.
Only six out of the Senate's 40 Republicans have said they will vote for Sotomayor. If all the rest vote no and all Democrats vote yes, the final tally would be 64-34 (ailing Democratic Sens. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Robert Byrd of West Virginia aren't expected to vote).
Even if a few Democrats vote no or another Republican or two vote yes, this is shaping up to be a second straight mostly party-line Supreme Court vote, following Samuel Alito's 58-42 confirmation in 2006. Only four Democrats voted for President George W. Bush's nominee; one Republican voted against him.
Keep tabs on which senators have committed to yes or no votes with NationalJournal.com's Vote Tracker.
By at least one measure, Sonia Sotomayor is likely the most liberal Supreme Court nominee in more than 40 years.
Sotomayor's ranking is a preliminary finding by Stony Brook University political science professor Jeffrey Segal, who parses newspaper editorials to score high court nominees on their perceived qualifications and ideology.
Sotomayor has a perceived ideology of 0.79 on the 0-1 scale, with 1 being most liberal. Her qualifications register at 0.8, with 1 being most qualified.
The ranking system, known as the Segal-Cover score (Albert Cover was Segal's original partner developing the system), evaluates nominees dating back to the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. The newspapers Segal uses are the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times.
The ideology score "is a little higher than I would have expected," he said, possibly because of all the focus on the ruling of Sotomayor's 2nd Circuit panel in the polarizing discrimination case Ricci v. DeStefano. "These scores represent to some extent a fixture on what's current, not necessarily what the court would see," he added.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has the most liberal ideology score of anyone currently on the court; she was at 0.68 as a nominee. Stephen Breyer is second at 0.48. Sotomayor's presumed score would be the most liberal since Thurgood Marshall scored at 1.0 in 1967.
Sotomayor's 0.8 qualifications score was less of a surprise, Segal said. "The only real question about her qualifications" was whether she would be biased as a judge, stemming from concerns over her "wise Latina woman" remark, he said.
Segal will continue looking through editorials until the full Senate votes on Sotomayor, expected later this week. Segal said, though, that only new information would drastically change his preliminary findings. He cautioned that these scores only measure perceptions of nominees and don't predict how they would rule on the high court.
"Detailed discussions of 'disparate impact'... are not big ratings-grabbers," Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post observed during the Senate Judiciary hearings on Sonia Sotomayor.
Indeed not. That's why most of the media understandably took a minimalist approach to explaining the issue at the core of Judge Sotomayor's most controversial decision, in the New Haven firefighter case, and the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling on June 29 reversing it.
Disparate-impact lawsuits -- typically brought by blacks and/or Hispanics who challenge as discriminatory employers' use of objective tests on which those minorities do poorly -- are unavoidably complex.
But perhaps the educated public might find the complexities worth understanding if the media explained how such lawsuits can -- depending on how the extraordinarily vague rules codified by Congress in 1991 are interpreted -- either open opportunities to qualified minorities, or foster discrimination against better-qualified whites, or some of both.
I explored some of this terrain in my May 31 column. But it's worth revisiting because the firefighter decision, Ricci v. DeStefano, both clarified the law and pointed to the need for further clarification.
The majority made it somewhat easier for employers to defend against disparate-impact suits -- and harder to justify discriminating against whites based on fear of such suits.
But that will change, the four liberal dissenters made clear, if they can get one more vote to impose broader disparate-impact liability -- which, as the majority explained, would be (and sometimes has been) an engine of quotas and discrimination.
This is not to deny that disparate-impact lawsuits can play a valuable role in protecting minorities against tests and other selection criteria that disproportionately exclude minorities for lacking skills of little relevance to the positions they seek. One example is using IQ scores to screen applicants for jobs that don't involve difficult cognitive tasks. But the tests in use by most employers now are carefully designed and reasonably related to the requirements of the job.
The firefighter case was not itself a disparate-impact suit. But it dramatized how even the mere threat of such suits can lead to overt racial discrimination against whites, especially by employers who -- as in New Haven -- may already have political motives to discriminate.
Continue reading The Importance Of 'Disparate Impact'.
• "On Tuesday, the Senate is expected to take up the Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor," The Hill reports. "Senate Republicans have proposed a four-day debate on the nominee and Senate Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Jeff Sessions (Ala.) has called on every Republican senator to review Sotomayor's record and speak at length on the floor. Senate Democratic leaders, however, say that two days should be enough."
• Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., "says he is still on the fence" about Sotomayor, AP reports. "McCain says he is examining Sotomayor's record as an appeals court judge to decide whether she understands the limits to judicial power. He voted against her when she was nominated to the appeals court."
• "Ever since President Barack Obama tapped Sotomayor... to serve as the first Hispanic on the nation's highest court, the nomination has become not only a source of pride among South Florida's Puerto Rican community, but also a platform to flex its political muscle," the Miami Herald reports.
• "The National Rifle Association's threat to punish senators who vote for" Sotomayor "has been met with a shrug by Democrats from conservative-leaning states and some Republicans who are breaking with their party to support her," AP reported on Sunday.
Commentary
• The New York Times charges that the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee who voted against Sotomayor made "flimsy arguments," and hopes that "the vote in the full Senate for Judge Sotomayor will be overwhelming and the rhetoric more high-minded."
• In Politico, Nan Aron, president of the left-leaning Alliance for Justice, says this nomination has made it easier for Obama to pick a more liberal justice next time: "If a small Republican minority is going to oppose a moderate as if she's an unhinged extremist, there should be no political cost to nominating a qualified candidate who is a true progressive."
Continue reading Top Nomination News.
With the House long gone, the Senate will turn its attention this week to passing one more spending bill, replenishing the popular Cash for Clunkers program and confirming Sonia Sotomayor, all with the aim to leave town Friday until after Labor Day.
Subscribers to CongressDaily can continue reading the story here.
