As heated as reactions to President Obama's recent nomination might seem to the average consumer of news, it pales in comparison to the importance of the seat which Sonia Sotomayor might occupy this autumn.
If Sotomayor is confirmed, and there is no serious indication she won't be, the 54-year-old woman might lord over lawyers for the next three decades. Justice John Paul Stevens, age 89, has been on the Court for more than 33 years, since being nominated by President Ford in 1975.
Ford, the '70s, and most of the people who were instrumental in the 'experiences' that led to Stevens' being nominated are long gone, but Stevens remains, and has been shaping the national legal landscape for longer than most of us have been alive. Appointment to the nation's highest tribunal is no light matter.
What makes things more serious is that the framers of the Constitution included no formal qualifications for a person to be an associate or even Chief justice of the Supreme Court, so legislators are given free reign as far as what sources they use to determine their vote.
That means that, just as President Obama's well-publicized qualification of 'empathy' is a valid metric, so too is anything that a potential justice might have said or done over the course of his or her career.
The criticisms launched by Rush Limbaugh and the like are justifiable critiques of the wisdom and discretion of a woman who is supposed to have empathy (one is begged to ask, 'empathy with whom.') Sotomayor's statement reveals that she does not come to a case as blind as the statue of justice that adorns the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.
This is no surprise to me or any other conservative, but it is important to note when proponents of her elevation assert that she is bipartisan. I can assure them, and anyone else who may care, without having ever met the woman, that party politics has nothing to do with her decision on cases that come before her.
Her appointment by President George H.W. Bush is as relevant to her judicial ideology as was that of the man she is supposed to replace, David Souter. Since taking office in 1990, Souter has tilted reliably left on days of judgment. You wouldn't know that if all you had to go on was the slander that accompanied him as the nominee of a Republican president; back then, Democrats thought he would be a radical right-winger. Perhaps if they had had some utterances to go on, they might have felt comforted.
The tight-lipped Souter was habitually cautious enough to prevent any telltale public slips. Sonia Sotomayor has been kind enough to be a little more verbal, and everyone involved in her nomination and probable confirmation would do well to consider her statements and move slowly, very slowly. There is no rush; Court will not be in session until the first Monday in October. Justice demands a fair, intensely-discussed process.
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