JCN Statement

With 37 votes against her and a public approval rating less than 50%, Kagan's confirmation had the least support of any Democratic nominee for over 100 years and she is the least popular nominee in recent memory to win confirmation. The bipartisan opposition to her nomination indicates that even Democrats are worried that a vote for Kagan will tie them to the president's unpopular legislative agenda in an important election year.

Judge Sotomayor stuck to her John Roberts imitation today, refusing to endorse the Obama standard of judging and the view of the Constitution that he was so confident that she shared. It's hard to imagine how any future Obama court nominee will be able to defend his vision of judging based on what is in a judge's "heart" after Sotomayor rejected it so forcefully.

The testimony of firefighters Frank Ricci and Ben Vargas today was incredibly powerful: they were able to speak directly to the American people and explain how hard they worked, and the sacrifices their families made, to enable them to succeed on the firefighter promotion test in New Haven, only to have their claims thrown out by Judge Sotomayor without a legal explanation why.

Statement by Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network.

The first face is the one we know from three decades of her life as a lawyer and judge. The second face is like a mask she donned today, and can only be chalked up to a "confirmation conversion": she is saying things today that are irreconcilable with what she's said for the last 30 years.

She denies to Sen. Graham that she adheres to the Legal Realism school, yet she wrote a law review article embracing it.

Statement by Gary Marx of the Judicial Confirmation Network.

Senate Republicans Senators Sessions and Hatch were clearly on offense today during the Sotomayor confirmation hearings where they injected issues and substance into a process that the Democrats have clouded with stories and softballs. Sotomayor was consistently on defense, apologizing for past statements like the “Wise Latina” comment, explaining away problems from her record and providing new inconsistencies to compare with past published statements and cases.

Both Senators Sessions and Hatch delivered on the promise to make this a debate of substance that the American people deserve when we venture to confirm a lifetime member of the Supreme Court. Time and time again their questions went back to the issues like the 2nd Amendment and racial preferences used in the New Haven Firefighters case.

The GOP seems determined not to let the Democrat Majority simply rubber stamp this nominee.

"Frank Ricci finally got his day in court, despite the judging of Sonia Sotomayor, which all nine Justices of U.S. Supreme Court have now confirmed was in error.

"Usually, poor performance in any profession is not rewarded with the highest job offer in the entire profession.

"What Judge Sotomayor did in Ricci was the equivalent of a pilot error resulting in a bad plane crash. And now the pilot is being offered to fly Air Force One.

"The firefighters in New Haven who protect the public safety and worked hard for their promotions did not deserve to become victims of racial quotas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that they did not deserve to have their claims buried and thrown out by Judge Sotomayor."

This is the biggest piece of fiction writing I have seen. It bears no resemblance to reality. I have a hard time believing anyone in the GOP would buy this fantasy. The President voted against his own talking points when he voted against Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito as a Senator. He tried to block this philosophy by filibuster. And now he is serving them up to the U.S. Senate? They, of course, do not remotely describe the Obama nominee. The White House obviously has made a mistake, passing out the leftover talking points that must have been in the West Wing about Cheif Justice Roberts and Justice Alito.

Statement by Wendy Long, Chief Counsel, Judicial Confirmation Network:

“Comments yesterday by the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and today by Senator Chuck Schumer, that statements made at Duke University by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in which she said appellate courts should ‘make policy’ were taken out of context are purposely misleading and outright misinformation designed to walk back an obvious vetting problem this White House has become known for. If Mr. Gibbs or Senator Schumer were to read other law review articles written by Judge Sotomayor, her own published word, it is clear and unequivocal that Judge Sotomayor has a long track record of advocating for using courts to make policy and laws. It is obvious that the reason the White House has churned up its spin machine on this is because countless polls consistently show that the American people to do not support judges making policy or law from the bench. The American people have spoken loudly and often on this subject, they want judges who interpret law as made through the people and their elected representatives, not through judges imposing their personal political views from the bench as Judge Sotomayor has consistently advocated.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' comments yesterday that "We can all move past YouTube snippets and half sentences and actually look at the honest-to-God record" raise an important question for Mr. Gibbs. The Duke University comments by Judge Sotomayor are quite clear and unequivocal. Is Mr. Gibbs suggesting that Judge Sotomayor was lying in the tape or that she really didn't mean it?

Wendy E. Long, counsel to the Judicial Confirmation Network, on nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court:

“Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important than the law as written. She thinks that judges should dictate policy, and that one’s sex, race, and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders from the bench.

“She reads racial preferences and quotas into the Constitution, even to the point of dishonoring those who preserve our public safety. On September 11, America saw firsthand the vital role of America’s firefighters in protecting our citizens. They put their lives on the line for her and the other citizens of New York and the nation. But Judge Sotomayor would sacrifice their claims to fair treatment in employment promotions to racial preferences and quotas. The Supreme Court is now reviewing that decision.

“She has an extremely high rate of her decisions being reversed, indicating that she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court.”

Wendy Long, JCN Chief Counsel: As expected, Justice Souter is retiring, giving President Obama his first Supreme Court nomination just 3 months into his presidency.

Keep in mind: 1. The current Supreme Court is a liberal, judicial activist court. Obama could make it even more of a far-left judicial activist court, for a long time to come, if he appoints radicals like Diane Wood, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. A new Justice in this mold would just entrench a bad majority for a long time.

2. If Obama holds to his campaign promise to appoint a Justice who rules based on her own "deepest values" and what’s in her own "heart"—instead of what is in the Constitution and laws—he will be the first American President who has made lawlessness an explicit standard for Supreme Court Justices.

3. The President and Senators need to be careful about, respectively, nominating and appointing a hard-left judicial activist. Americans who elected Obama may have done so out of fear for the economy or other reasons, but they did not elect him because they share his views on judges. By a margin of more and 3 to 1, Americans want Supreme Court Justices who will practice judicial restraint and follow the law, not jurists who will indulge their own personal views and experiences in deciding cases.

4. As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has pointed out, a judge who decides cases based on her personal and political views, instead of what the law says, will have a hard time fulfilling her oath to dispense justice impartially. Senators have a constitutional duty to rigirously scrutinize the nominee on this score, and vote "no" if the nominee cannot establish that she will follow the law, rather than her own values and beliefs, as the President has suggested.