Decoding Sotomayor Opening Statements
What the Senate Judiciary Committee really meant by their opening statements.
By Matt Zeitlin
July 14, 2009
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on Capitol Hill before her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)Judicial Nominations are strange affairs. With the exception of Robert Bork, no recent nominee has been undone by what they said in their hearings. Instead, the senators take advantage of time that is putatively for the examination of the nominee’s temperament and record to play to their base or make political points against their opponents. In short, it’s theater. But, all the while, they have to cloak their pontificating in the boring lexicon of judicial confirmation hearings. As a service, Campus Progress has decoded parts of the opening statements of six senators.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said:
Now, unless you have a complete meltdown, you’re going to get confirmed. (LAUGHTER)
And I don’t think you will, but, you know, the drama that’s being created here is—is—is interesting.
But what Graham meant was:
I, Lindsey Graham, will cause that meltdown by singing your Succubus song backwards, thus causing the demon inside you to erupt out of your body and be sucked back into hell. And you thought Jeff Sessions was tough.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) said:
Judge Sotomayor has said that she accepts that her opinions, sympathies, and prejudices will affect her rulings. Could it be that her time as a leader of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund provides a clue as to her decision against the firefighters?
While the nominee was Chair of the Fund’s Litigation Committee, the organization aggressively pursued racial quotas in city hiring and, in numerous cases, fought to overturn the results of promotion exams.
It seems to me that in Ricci, Judge Sotomayor’s empathy for one group of firefighters turned out to be prejudice against the others.
But what Sessions meant was:
Just in case you didn’t already know, Sonia Sotomayor is a Latina woman, and Frank Ricci is a white man. I just want to make that clear.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) said:
Over time, however, the Supreme Court has often veered off the course established by the Framers. First, the Supreme Court has invented new rights not clearly rooted in any constitutional text. For example, the Supreme Court has micromanaged the death penalty, creating new rights spun from whole cloth. It has announced constitutional rules governing everything from punitive damages to sexual activity. It has relied on international law that the People never adopted.
The Supreme Court has even taken on the job of defining the rules for the game of golf. (If you’re curious, the case is PGA Tour v. Martin from 2001). Some people call this "judicial activism." Whatever you call it, it’s pretty far from enforcing the written Constitution that the Framers proposed and the people enacted.
But what Hatch meant was:
America was a great land governed by the rule of law until those golf-cart drivin’ gays ruined everything.
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) said:
That is why justices need great legal expertise, but they also need wisdom, they need judgment, they need to understand the impact of their decisions on the parties before them and the country around them, from New York City to small towns like Spooner, Wisconsin, and they need a deep appreciation of and dedication to equality, to liberty, to democracy.
But what Feingold meant was:
If you laugh at “Spooner, Wisconsin” you don’t have the temperament befitting a Supreme Court Justice.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) said:
And while Senator Hatch is a famed gospel music songwriter, Senator Leahy is such a devoted fan of the Grateful Dead that he once had trouble taking a call from the President of the United States because in fact the Chairman was onstage at a Grateful Dead concert.
But what Amy Klobuchar meant was:
Clearly Patrick Leahy should call an end to these shenanigans and make Orrin Hatch sing “Casey Jones.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said:
It has been a truism since Marbury v. Madison that courts have the authority to "say what the law is," even to invalidate statutes enacted by the elected branches of government when they conflict with the Constitution. So the issue is not whether you have a wide field of discretion: You will. As Justice Cardozo reminds us, you are not free to act as "a knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of [your] own ideal of beauty or of goodness," yet, he concluded, "[w]ide enough in all conscience is the field of discretion that remains."
But what Whitehouse meant was:
Sure, you may be the first Latino nominee, but this wouldn’t be a real confirmation hearing if I didn’t at least quote some dead white guys.
Matt Zeitlin is an editorial intern at Campus Progress and a sophomore at Northwestern University. Follow him on Twitter.
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I hate to say this, but this was a surprisingly uninformative article. I’m used to insightful articles here on Campus Progress but this simply dumbed down what could have been an interesting topic. I understand it was supposed to be humorous, but simply ridiculing Senators and completely overlooking the points they were making isn’t interesting to read.
-disappointed reader
— Josh Blackburn - Jul 16, 12:52 PM - #