Morning Bell: A Victory for the Rule of Law
Conn Carroll /
In his opening statement Monday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor: “I don’t think anybody here worked harder for Senator McCain than I did, but we lost, and President Obama won. And that ought to matter. It does to me…Unless you have a complete meltdown, you’re going to get confirmed.” One day of opening statements, and two days of questioning later, it does not appear that Sotomayor had the “complete meltdown” necessary to derail her nomination. But that does not mean her confirmation hearings were a waste of time.
Quite the contrary. Tough questioning by conservative senators afforded Sotomayor a rare opportunity to defend the principles of progressive/liberal jurisprudence. But Sotomayor declined to defend those principles at every turn. Instead, according to Case Western law professor Jonathan Adler, Sotomayor sounded “more like the sort of nominee we would have expected from a President McCain than a President Obama.”
Rejecting the Living Constitution: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) asked Sotomayor flat out: “Do you believe the Constitution is a living, breathing, evolving document?” Sotomayor then flatly rejected the views of liberal scholars and jurists: “The Constitution is a document that is immutable to the sense that it’s lasted 200 years. The Constitution has not changed except by amendment. It is a process, an amendment process that is set forth in the document. It doesn’t live other than to be timeless by the expression of what it says.” She later told Sen. Al Franken (D-MN): “[T]he role of the court is never to make the policy. It’s to wait until Congress acts.” (more…)