Chapter 15. The Federal Courts Vid: Sotomayor Wins Confirmation -
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permitted. On this vote the yeas are 68 and the nays are 31. The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor of New York to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is confirmed.
Several Republicans joined majority Democrats in supporting the fifty-five year old Sotomayor who served as a federal judge for seventeen years. Moments later at the White House, President Barack Obama praised the Senate’s decision.
With this historic moment, the Senate has affirmed that Judge Sotomayor has the intellect, the temperament, the history, the integrity, and the independence of mind to ably serve on our nation’s highest court.
The daughter of Puerto Rican parents, she grew up in public housing in the Bronx, a borough of New York City. She overcame a childhood diagnosis of diabetes and the death of her father and went on to attend Princeton University and Yale law school. Despite being confirmed by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, Sotomayor faced steady criticism, mostly from Republicans, right up to the final vote.
In America, everyone should receive equal justice under the law.
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They said she exhibited a liberal bias that ran counter to constitutional protections particularly in joining other federal appeals judges, who ruled against white firefighters in a discrimination law suit. The Supreme Court recently reversed that decision.
Combined partiality and subjectivity and judging with uncertainty and instability in the law, and the result is an activist judicial philosophy that I cannot support, and that the American people reject.
But Democrats said critics over-emphasized her comment during a two thousand one speech that she believed a wise Latina judge would make better decisions than a white male, without her life experiences.
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Her supporters also said her opinions fell mostly in the mainstream.
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She is a judge of unimpeachable character and integrity.
She demonstrated during the week of intense questioning before the judiciary committee, that she’s tough, she’s smart, and most important, she knows the law.
Her record is beyond reproach. Her respect for the limits the judiciary are resolute and a reverence for the law is unwavering.
President Obama nominated Sotomayor to replace retired liberal-leaning justice David Souter. Some analysts expect her confirmation will not likely affect the ideological balance of the Supreme Court.
Robert Raffaele, VOA News