Republican Opposition to Sotomayor Widens Gulf Over High Court
Aug. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Overwhelming Republican opposition to Sonia Sotomayor’s U.S. Supreme Court nomination, as the Senate nears a decision to confirm her, widens a partisan gulf that has lawmakers voting on ideology rather than qualifications.
The Senate will vote today on Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, announced last night the vote will occur about 3 p.m. Washington time. Democrats control the chamber 60-40, ensuring that Sotomayor will become the first Hispanic and third woman ever to serve on the court.
With at least 30 Republicans set to vote against her, Sotomayor will become the third nominee in a row to be opposed by at least half the minority party’s senators, following George W. Bush nominees John Roberts and Samuel Alito. The vote will mark the first time that three successive nominations have received more than 20 votes in opposition.
“We have allowed ideology to hold a preeminent role as opposed to qualifications,” said Florida Republican Mel Martinez, who has announced his support for Sotomayor. “I find it very, very appalling.”
Much like the Democrats who opposed Roberts, Republicans almost universally acknowledged Sotomayor had the experience and intellect to serve on the high court.
“There is no doubt that Judge Sotomayor has the professional background and qualifications that one hopes for in a Supreme Court nominee,” Republican John McCain of Arizona said on the Senate floor this week.
‘Troubling Record’
McCain nonetheless said he would vote against Sotomayor, 55, faulting her for a “troubling record of being an activist judge who strayed beyond the rule of law.” He pointed to the Supreme Court’s reversal of Sotomayor in several recent cases.
Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas said that most of Sotomayor’s rulings were “within the mainstream of American jurisprudence.” At the same time, he said he will vote against her in part because of speeches suggesting that ethnicity and gender should influence a judge’s decisions.
The stances taken by Republicans are similar to the positions taken by many Democrats in opposing Roberts and Alito. Roberts received 22 of 44 Democratic votes for his nomination to become chief justice in 2005, while Alito got support from just four Democrats in 2006.
In 2005, then-Senator Obama said there was “absolutely no doubt in my mind Judge Roberts is qualified to sit on the highest court in the land.” Obama voted against Roberts, saying “he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak” in his work as a lawyer.
No More Unanimity
“We will no longer see unanimous or near-unanimous votes on nominees because at least 15 to 20 senators from each party have indicated that they are willing to vote a nominee down primarily on ideological grounds,” said David Yalof, a political science professor at the University of Connecticut in Storrs. He is the author of “Pursuit of Justices: Presidential Politics and the Selection of Supreme Court Nominees.”
Republicans hinted that the Sotomayor vote was payback. Cornyn pointed to the Democrats’ success in scuttling Bush’s nomination of Miguel Estrada to a federal appeals court in Washington. Some conservatives had been eyeing Estrada as a candidate to become the first Hispanic justice.
The polarization of the Senate on high court appointments is unprecedented, at least as measured by vote totals. The last time three straight nominees drew even 10 opposition votes apiece was in 1888 and 1889, when Democrat Grover Cleveland nominated Lucius Lamar and Melville Fuller and Republican Benjamin Harrison selected David Brewer. Lamar was confirmed 32-28, Fuller 41-20 and Brewer 53-11.
Jackson Nominations
In the 1830s, four successive Andrew Jackson nominees were opposed by at least 11 senators, and one was defeated.
Most nominees have received token opposition if that. President Bill Clinton’s appointees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, were confirmed by a combined vote of 183-12. Clinton made those selections based in part on the recommendations of Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, then the Judiciary Committee’s top Republican.
When controversies have arisen, they have generally dissipated after the president offered a compromise candidate. President Richard Nixon’s nominations of Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell were defeated before the Senate unanimously confirmed Nixon’s third choice, Harry Blackmun, in 1970.
In 1987 the Senate rejected Robert Bork’s nomination and President Ronald Reagan withdrew his next choice, Douglas Ginsburg, amid revelations he smoked marijuana as a law professor. The Senate then unanimously confirmed Anthony Kennedy.
NRA Opposition
Republican opposition to Sotomayor was fueled by interest groups, including the National Rifle Association, which opposed her and said the vote would count in its ratings of senators. That pressure was enough to persuade some senators to run the political risk of opposing the first Hispanic nominee.
The Republican votes suggest that those interest groups have “an awful lot of clout,” said Christopher L. Eisgruber, provost of Princeton University in New Jersey and author of “The Next Justice: Repairing the Supreme Court Appointments Process.”
He added, “What I think is difficult to see at this point is exactly what kind of person President Obama could nominate who would not provoke some significant opposition from the minority party.”
No comments:
Post a Comment