Macomb, IL – Hearings on President Obama's Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor are starting amid opposition that focuses on the false claim that she's an "activist" judge, her background as a Latina woman, and her generally favorable attitude toward unions, and her critics increasingly are revealing how today's Republican Party has been taken over by extremist elements willing to disparage the judiciary for political ends.
The independent-minded federal appeals court judge in 1995 ruled against Major League Baseball owners trying to hire scabs and collude in order to destroy the MLB Players Association labor union and perhaps the National Pastime itself, and in 2004 she agreed with the National Football Players Association in its effort to limit eligible athletes, writing, "Those 1,500 players want to protect themselves. That's what unions do: They protect people in the union from people not in the union."
Some ultra conservatives are attacking Sotomayor for a remark in a 2001 lecture at a symposium titled "Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation" at Berkeley: She said, "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
The whole speech - targeted to the audience assembled for that theme -- also mentions her taste in food, music, movies and games tied to her roots, and is much more revealing.
She noted that "nine white men" correctly decided Brown vs. Board of Education, the 1954 decision declaring legal segregation unconstitutional. Also, however, that until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case.'
Experiences affect how judges judge, of course, and a Puerto Rican woman may see things differently from an Irish-Catholic man like Chief Justice John Roberts, but her decisions need to be grounded in the facts and the law.
Oddly, there was no outcry during Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing, when he said that his roots affected his consideration of cases, testifying, "When a case comes before me involving, say, someone who is an immigrant, I can't help but think of my own ancestors because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position."
The personal attacks on Sotomayor - like her membership in Belizean Grove, an all-women's alternative to the notorious power-broker club the Bohemian Grove -- have little to do with the 3,000-plus cases she's heard in 16 years on the bench. Former GOP Presidential candidate Tom Tancredo called her a racist, hate radio's Rush Limbaugh said she was like one-time Klansman David Duke, and the conservative National Review magazine depicted her in an Asian caricature. The list of her critics is a Who's Who of the Right, including Glenn Beck, Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Gordon Liddy and Mitt Romney.
Roberto Rodriguez, a University of Arizona research associate, said, "The majority of Americans can see through the false arguments and the clever' subversion of the political language. Americans can now clearly see that the politics of Gingrich and Tancredo are the same as that of Limbaugh, Liddy, Beck, Buchanan and Dobbs."
On Capitol Hill, the Senate Judiciary Committee's top Republican, Alabama's Jeff Sessions, accused Obama of choosing "activist" judges for the bench, pushing federal courts "to the Left."
In fact, since 1973's Roe vs. Wade ruling against abortion prohibition based on a right of privacy, the Supreme Court has been blasted as a panel of activist judges needing "strict constructionists" -- judges who'd stick to a narrower reading of the Constitution's original intent. However, "judicial activism" is more of a conservative tool than a progressive one, according to a study by Yale Law School's Paul Gewirtz, who found that conservative justices were more activist, measured by their overturning laws passed by Congress -- the public's representatives. For example, conservative Clarence Thomas voted to overturn 65 percent of the statutes that came before the court, while liberal Stephen Breyer voted to overturn only 28 percent, Gewirtz showed.
Such fights over Supreme Court nominees decrease people's respect for the courts, according to a new book, "Citizens, Courts and Confirmations," co-authored by Ohio State's Gregory Caldeira.
Caldeira said, "Americans have long believed that Supreme Court justices are above politics. Anything that drags the Court into ordinary politics damages the esteem of the institution. If interest groups air attack ads against Sotomayor, that could undermine some of the public support for the Supreme Court. They take information out of context and frame the person as an extremist."
Sotomayor has solid academic credentials, judicial experience, and an inspiring life story. Is it enough? Caldeira says that's where the debate should be, adding, "Americans accept the decisions of the Supreme Court because they see it as a legitimate judicial institution. If the Court loses that legitimacy, all Americans lose."
Sotomayor's 7-page lecture is available online at a web site maintained by the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network.