Sonia Sotomayor: Justice at Last?

As of this writing, the Senate Judiciary Committee was ready to make a favorable recommendation to the full Senate for the appointment of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court. That she would become an Associate Justice of that court, a life-time position, now appears to be a virtual certainty – primarily because of the overwhelming Democratic majority in the Senate (60 Democrats versus 40 Republicans) – and the inability of her detractors to dig up any adverse information which could derail the process of her confirmation by the full Senate.

Opposing Judge Sotomayor – even half-heartedly – has proved tricky business for the Republicans. Because of her being a woman, it has been a delicate balancing act for Republicans who have – in the past – faced accusations of trying to shape the US Supreme Court into a club of good old boys where women did not belong. Over the past two to three decades, the thrust of that strategy has been not so much on openly stating that women could not do the “job” (and in any case, Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg have already dispelled that myth) but conducting a wholesale glorification of how special the job of being a woman is and how a woman’s place at home can never be filled by anybody else – and what a special privilege it is to stay home and take care of children as stay-home mothers! A notable example of how Republicans have gotten into trouble for the perception that they have been “attacking” women is the Senator Arlen Specter whose vicious attacks on a woman accuser of Justice Thomas almost two decades ago nearly cost him his Senate seat – and eventually led him to abandon the Republican Party altogether in order to salvage his image as a “liberal”.

The most committed conservatives within the Republican Party, however, tend to look at the current American population tilt toward liberalism as a passing phenomenon and hope that the American public – with its notorious short attention span – will forget over time some of their current failures of policies and their questionable political maneuvers.

Judge Sotomayor’s being a Latina complicates the situation further for the Republicans. Because of the rising voting clout of Hispanic voters (currently the Hispanic population stands at approximately 10 percent of the US population) the perception of attacking a Latina on ethnic grounds can amount to political hara-kiri for many Republicans – especially those from Congressional districts with sizeable Hispanic populations.

Judge Sotomayor is a well regarded judge. Her qualifications are second to none. She was educated at Princeton and Yale. From all accounts, she is a highly motivated person who is driven by a genuine desire to serve the public. (The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, one of her early patrons, was even then convinced that she would become the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice.) She empathizes with poor folks who end up on the wrong side of law due to poverty and associated factors but she is also very tough on serious criminals. Further, she has a reputation of working very hard to prepare for the cases she hears. She is known to keep the lawyers on their toes – questioning them incessantly. She is the winner of numerous awards and honorary degrees. Her awards include those given for gender, racial, and ethnic fairness. And as the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings have shown – where she repeatedly made the point that the job of a judge is to apply the law, but did not state her positions on specific controversial issues that may come before the court – she knows how to keep her cool.

The problem – from the perspective of many conservative Republicans – is not that she would necessarily vote against their positions on various issues – it is the fact that over the past 32 years (20 of them under Republican Presidents) the conservative segment has gotten used to having its way virtually all the time. Therefore, even the slightest of uncertainties on issues dear to them becomes unacceptable. (Even back in 1997-1998, when she was nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, the Republicans had tried to delay her confirmation and managed to drag their feet for over a year.) Unfortunately for the conservatives, the Republican Party now does not have the necessary numbers to prevent some of the changes from taking place – changes not to their liking.

Most of Judge Sotomayor’s individual judgments seem to follow a moderate path. She has upheld the government’s right to decide if it does not wish to fund abortion-related services. She has upheld First Amendment rights of police officers – taking the position that even if they use it to promote offensive, hateful, and insulting speech, they cannot be summarily dismissed without due process. She has upheld the rights of school administrators to expel disruptive students. But she has also opposed strip searches in juvenile detention centers. She has made many judgments that have pleased the liberals and many that have pleased the conservatives.

However, she also has a track record of speaking her mind in open forums – where she has frequently discussed her ethnic upbringing and the history of minorities. She has expressed dissatisfaction regarding the low number of minorities in many positions of responsibility in the legal field. The conservatives fear that when she joins the Supreme Court as an Associate Justice, she could move from just talking about the problems to actively doing something about them. Her judgment in the case of the fire fighters from the City of New Haven reinforces their fears.

Sonia Sotomayor has waited a long time for her current nomination – and the country has waited much longer to see a Hispanic Judge in the Supreme Court. In the eyes of her detractors, the candidate’s judicial competence takes a back seat to the fear of her potential judicial activism. For many such people, someone like Justice Thomas would make an ideal judge who – even though he writes very few opinions of his own, almost invariably rules alongside the arch conservative Justice Scalia.

It is rather ironical that Justice Thomas was originally nominated to replace the late Justice Thurgood Marshal – one of the most liberal judges of all times! Perhaps it is only just that the scales of justice finally begin to balance a bit instead of continually veering to the right!