No Wisdom In These Experiences

This Monday, the Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings on the candidacy of Sonia Sotomayor to be Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. The hearings, which were televised on C-SPAN as well as streamed live from the Judiciary Committee website, began at 10 AM on Monday, July 13 with opening statements from all the Senators on the Committee and a concluding statement by Sotomayor herself.

Yet despite the scant amount of time during which the Justice herself got to speak, the first day’s hearings prefaced the tone which could be expected from both parties, as well as the rhetorical strategy employed by Judge Sotomayor to diffuse criticism. The Judge’s personal background also figured at the outset.

Before statements began, committee chair Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) offered Judge Sotomayor a chance to introduce her family, which Sotomayor accepted, though she declined to verbally introduce all involved. “If I introduced everybody who was family-like, we’d be here all morning,” Sotomayor said.

In his opening statement, Leahy stressed repeatedly the “historic” nature of Sotomayor’s nomination as well as her “truly American story.” Leahy also invoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous quote that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” “I believe this nomination could be another step over that path,” Leahy said.

Leahy also foreshadowed one of the arguments used by the Democrats in support of the Sotomayor nomination, as his speech stressed her experience both inside and outside the realm of appellate law repeatedly. “Judge Sotomayor’s qualifications are outstanding. She’s had more Federal Court and Judicial experience than any nominee to the United States Supreme Court in nearly one hundred years,” Leahy said. “She’ll be the only current Supreme Court Justice to have served as a trial judge…she brings a wealth of diversity and experience to the court.”

With respect to this “diversity and experience,” Leahy compared Judge Sotomayor to previous nominees Louis Brandeis and Thurgood Marshall, both nominees whose race and controversial views complicated their confirmation. “When Thurgood Marshall was before the Senate for his confirmation, he was asked questions designed to embarrass him,” Leahy said. “I hope that’s a time from our past.” In discussing these “questions designed to embarrass” minority candidates, Leahy did not make any mention of the allegations of Anita Hill against African-American Jurist and current Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, nor of Thomas at all.

Following Leahy’s statement, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) gave his statement, which also prefaced the Republican line on Sotomayor’s nomination. Sessions spent scant time discussing Sotomayor herself, rather choosing to focus on the judicial philosophy which President Obama had expressed in choosing her. “I’m afraid our system will only be further corrupted as a result of President Obama’s views that in tough cases, the deciding factor should be the ‘depth and breath of one’s empathy,’” Sessions said. “I will not vote for and no Senator should vote for an individual nominated by any President… who believes it is acceptable to allow their personal background, gender, prejudices or sympathies to sway their sympathies. Such a philosophy is disqualified.”

Other Republicans more or less retained Sessions’ rhetoric and arguments in their speeches. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) compared Sotomayor to Janice Rodgers Brown, a minority candidate against whom President Obama had voted while a Senator, citing her “overreaching judicial philosophy.” Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), meanwhile, suggested that he might be persuaded to vote for Sotomayor, but only if she could explain her more “extreme” comments. Discussing Sotomayor’s well-known “Wise Latina” comment, Graham said “If I’d said anything even remotely like that, my career would’ve been over.”

Democrats, by contrast, did not press a unified counterargument. Many sought to downplay Sotomayor’s controversial remarks, as with Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI), who said, “I do not believe that anyone who has read the entire Berkeley speech could come to that conclusion.” However, others, such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), defended Sotomayor’s controversial ideas on the nature of objectivity. “I do not believe that Supreme Court Justices are merely umpires,” Feinstein said. “Rather, I believe that they make the decisions of individuals who bring to the court their own experiences and philosophies.”

However, Sotomayor did not bank on the good will of her defenders, choosing instead to adopt a stance which favored judicial restraint and defused criticism. “The task of a judge is not to make law; it is to apply the law,” Sotomayor said.

Mytheos Holt is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.