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Republicans Blast July 13 Confirmation Hearing Date For Sotomayor
June 12, 2009 7:39 a.m. EST
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Kris Alingod - AHN Contributor
Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Republicans are accusing Democrats of "partisanship" in their handling of the confirmation hearings for Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the first Supreme Court nominee of the Obama administration. The hearings begin on July 13, a date the GOP says puts the shortest timeframe for a nominee with one of the longest judiciary records, to "meet an arbitrary deadline."
Sotomayor needs Senate confirmation before becoming the third woman and first Hispanic to serve in the high court.
The 54-year-old judge began meeting last week with lawmakers and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee about her qualifications to take the seat of retiring Justice David Souter when the Supreme Court's new term begins on Oct. 5.
Her meetings so far have met with positive feedback from Republicans, who praised her while calling for a "thorough review" of her record.
The ranking Republican of the Judiciary Committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), has described her as "engaging" and her record "wonderful." Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) also met with the judge on Thursday and said, "She certainly has an impressive resume and I enjoyed our time together. We had a productive meeting... I hope to hear more from the Judge about her Second Amendment beliefs during her confirmation hearings."
But what has been a "bipartisan" process so far seems to have been interrupted by an announcement from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, this week that his panel will begin confirmation hearings on Sotomayor on July 13 so that the Senate can confirm the judge by August 6, before Congress takes its month-long summer recess.
Sessions said he only heard of the date from media reports.
"I believe that's too early. I don't believe it's necessary. It's far more important we do this right than we do it quick," he said in floor remarks. "The question is, can we get all this done in this rush-rush fashion? It will be the shortest confirmation time of any recent nominee. It is a time well shorter than that of Justice Roberts, now Chief Justice Roberts. We had a need to move that a bit because he was confirmed, as it turned out, September 29th, a couple of days before the new term began - and he was going to be chief justice."
"We are committed to a fair and just hearing but we need to examine the record... probably more than 4,000 cases. In addition she has given a lot of speeches and written law review articles and those need to be analyzed... this is the opportunity, this Congress and the American people have, to play a role in what would turn out to be a lifetime appointment to the federal bench, of independence and unaccountability for the rest of their life... the timeframe that is set forth is unrealistic," Sessions added.
Republicans have said "it would take a lot of time" to go through Sotomayor's 3,600 cases, which unlike Supreme Court Chief John Roberts' record of 327 cases is "unusually lengthy."
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) also said in statement Leahy's decision on the date "breaks with years of tradition" in which confirmation schedules were reached through bipartisan agreements, and "damages the cordiality and good will the Senate relies on to do its business."
"When it came to Republican nominees, like Judge Roberts and Judge Alito, our Democrat friends wanted time to review the record," McConnell added. "Republicans worked in a bipartisan fashion to come to a consensus on a fair process that respected the minority's rights. Yet when it comes to a Democrat nominee our friends want to deny Republicans the same rights. They want the shortest confirmation timeline in recent memory for someone with the longest judicial record in recent memory."
Leahy, however, said in his announcement that his schedule "tracks the process the Senate followed by bipartisan agreement in considering President Bush's nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court in 2005. That agreement was reached before the Committee received the answers to the bipartisan questionnaire, and before the Committee had received any of the 75,000 pages of documents from his years working in Republican administrations."
"If 48 days were sufficient to prepare for that hearing, in accordance with our agreement and the initial schedule, it is certainly adequate time to prepare for the confirmation hearing for Judge Sotomayor." Leahy added. "In selecting this date I am trying to be fair to all concerned. I want to be fair to the nominee and allow her the earliest possible opportunity to respond to the attacks made about her character. It is not fair for her critics to be calling her racist without allowing her the opportunity to respond."
Sotomayor is facing growing opposition from some conservatives, who cite a speech at the University of California, Berkeley in 2001 in which she said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often that not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," as evidence that she is an activist judge.
A TV ad from the Judicial Confirmation Network also shows footage of her saying, "The court of appeals is where policy is made."
President Barack Obama has responded to criticisms, saying in an NBC interview Sotomayor would have restated the controversial line in her speech if she could.
"If you look in the entire sweep of the essay that she wrote, what's clear is that she was simply saying that her life experiences will give her information about the struggles and hardships that people are going through. That will make her a good judge," he added.
A graduate of Princeton and Yale Law School, Sotomayor was confirmed as an appeals court judge in 1998 by a 67-29 vote in the Senate.
Her notable court rulings include one favoring a decision by New Haven City officials to scrap promotions for firefighters after no blacks had passed qualifying examinations. She also had blocked Major League Baseball owners in 1995 from ending the system of free agency, helping to end a player strike.
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