Even Democrats must reject Sotomayor
The Constitution of the United States, which every member of the U.S. Senate has sworn to uphold, gives the Senate the opportunity to review, and if necessary, reject, Supreme Court nominations. Their decision this summer should be an easy one. Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor must be rejected by the U.S. Senate.
This is not a matter of the usual, partisan objections to a federal appointment. Conservative presidents are expected to appoint conservative justices, and liberal presidents are expected to appoint liberal justices. Since a justice is bound to give the Constitution superior weight over his personal opinions, the political preferences of the nominee should normally not be grounds for opposition ... as long as they are reasonably mainstream opinions, and the justice can be trusted to let the Constitution rule his decisions.
Ms. Sotomayor is an unusual case. The problems with this nominee require that both parties reject her. She shouldn't get a single vote, not from Republicans, Democrats, or independents either, all of whom should be horrified at her nomination, which constitutes a direct frontal assault on the legislative process. In her years on the federal bench, Ms. Sotomayor has attained an astounding reversal rate of between 60 and 80 percent. This means that virtually all higher courts - liberal and conservative, Republican appointees and Democrat appointees alike - consider her decisions to be usually wrong.
As long as there are higher levels above her in the ladder of American jurisprudence, we are somewhat protected from her poor judgment, but there can be no excuse for putting her on the top level in this critical food chain.
The citation of her ethnicity as grounds for her appointment is a smoke-screen. The President hopes that the idea of appointing "the first Hispanic female from the Bronx" will eliminate any and all opposition. Such race-baiting tactics are shameful, and must be rejected for good, by all sides of the debate.
John F. Di Leo
Palatine