The Sotomayor Hearings

About what I expected, but I must admit just a little surprise at the efforts in double talk and dissimulation the Democrats are making to try and push Sotomayor through. She will likely be confirmed, but she's so obviously a second rate jurist who was nominated solely for ideology and ethnic bean counting. The hearings have just made it even more obvious.

When questioned about her 'wise Latina would make a better decision than a white male' remark, she came up with what was obviously a pre-planned statement that she merely meant to inspire prospective Latino jurists. And then she continued that of course, no ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in judging.

That's weird on the face of it, because if she acknowledges that the second statement is what she truly believes,than there was no reason to repeatedly make the 'wise Latina' remark at all in the first place, was there?

In response to a softball question on the matter from Senator leaky Leahy, she further said:

I want to state up front, unequivocally and without doubt, I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences.

What -- the words that I use, I used agreeing with the sentiment that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was attempting to convey. I understood that sentiment to be what I just spoke about, which is that both men and women were equally capable of being wise and fair judges.

That has to be what she meant, because judges disagree about legal outcomes all of the time -- or I shouldn't say all of the time, at least in close cases they do. Justices on the Supreme Court come to different conclusions. It can't mean that one of them is unwise, despite the fact that some people think that.

So her literal words couldn't have meant what they said. She had to have meant that she was talking about the equal value of the capacity to be fair and impartial.

Except, as John at Powerline points out, Sotomayor is simply lying again,because the point she made in her original speech wasn't about 'agreeing with the sentiment that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor was attempting to convey' but to disagree with O'Connor:

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle.

I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

Another interesting little contradiction came when Judge Sotomayor was questioned on Roe V Wade, which she considers ( her words) 'settled law', and thus immune to change or challenge. Yet, when questioned about the Heller 2nd Amendment case, she took exactly the opposite position, using the Supreme court's original decision to allow 'separate but equal ' segregated schools as opposed to Brown V. Board of Education delivered a few decades later that disallowed it as an example of an 'evolving position.'

In other words, words mean what you want them to mean, and decisions you approve of ideologically are 'settled ' but ones you don't are subject to change. Embarrassingly, Sotomayor didn't even do a particularly smooth job of getting through this even after all the coaching she received from the Obama administration.

She'll still likely be confirmed, but it has to be pretty obvious it won't be on her merits.