The confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor have begun. Some conservatives feel the Democratic-led Senate has rushed these hearings before there has been adequate time to evaluate Sotomayor’s past rulings and statements.
If confirmed, the 55-year-old appellate judge would be the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the nation's highest court.
“The American people want justice to be administered by judges who are neutral umpires – not activist policymakers,” says Mathew Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law. “Sonia Sotomayor has a history of judicial activism. She openly admits that she judges using personal prejudice rather than impartial neutrality. This is not the kind of justice we expect from judges.”
Let’s review some of her decisions:
While she was actively serving on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1980-1992, the PRLDEF filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing in favor of abortion.
She served on the Litigation Committee for eight years and chaired the committee for four. The group opposed the death penalty, opposed the confirmation of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, supported federal funding of abortion, and compared abortion restrictions to slavery.
PRLDEF also supported the abortion rights group, NOW, and other extreme groups, such as ACORN.
Sotomayor seemingly buried the now-infamous case of the racial case involving New Haven firefighter Frank Ricci, whose reverse discrimination claim is her most controversial ruling, by issuing it as a nonpublished opinion. Ricci will be among the 14 witnesses for Republican’s in Sotomayor’s hearings. Ricci claimed the City of New Haven discriminated against him because he was dyslexic.
Here’s the back story. A colleague of Sotomayor, Judge Jose Cabranes, who lives in New Haven, Connecticut, discovered the Ricci case when he read a story in the local newspaper. In the story, the attorney for the firefighters was complaining about the ruling. Sotomayor rejected Ricci’s reverse discrimination claim.
In the article, the attorney said she expected “a reasoned legal opinion, instead of an unpublished summary order, on what I saw as the most significant race case to come before the Circuit Court in 20 years.”
When Judge Cabranes began to dig for more information, he became sufficiently alarmed that he called for the full court to rehear the case. He wrote his now-famous opinion excoriating his colleagues for ducking the hard issues presented by the case, which ultimately got the attention of the Supreme Court. On June 30, the firefighters received justice when the High Court reversed the ruling. Did Sotomayor allow her personal bias to interfere with justice?
Sotomayor is expected to be confirmed in the Senate. If seated, will her position on our nations highest court lead us into a new era of legislating from the bench? Or will she be a fair-minded judge that will serve our land well?
The Controversial Sotomayor
