Somebody should call the Secret Service because clearly there’s been a kidnapping of President Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. A person calling herself Judge Sonia Sotomayor has appeared each day this week at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s confirmation hearing and that person looks and sounds exactly like the person who if confirmed will become either the nation’s first or second Hispanic member of the high court (Associate Justice Benjamin Cardozo was Jewish, but was of Spanish and Portugese parentage). Judging by her answers, however, the person responding to the barrage of questions from senators was not the person Obama nominated.
Obama made clear that he nominated Sotomayor because of his belief that federal judges should have empathy for the downtrodden, disadvantaged, and forgotten members of American society. But the person impersonating the president’s nominee responded contrarily when asked by Sen. Jon Kyl, R-AZ, about the Obama standard: “I wouldn’t approach the issue of judging in the way the president does. He has to explain what he meant by judging. I can only explain what I think judges should do, which is judges can’t rely on what’s in their heart. They don’t determine the law. Congress makes the laws.”
The chief executive has made it clear, too, that he is a member-in-good-standing of the Liberal School of Jurisprudence, which holds that Supreme Court justices should view the Constitution as a “living document” that can be changed over time by federal courts in order to meet evolving societal needs. But when Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-SC, asked the woman impersonating Sotomayor her view on the issue, she responded: “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.”
Finally, Obama has demonstrated in recent months on his several overseas trips that he places perhaps greater stock in the laws and customs of other nations than he does those of his own. But the impersonator in the confirmation hearing witness chair stunned onlookers by agreeing with the Court’s two most conservative members: “I have actually agreed with Justice Scalia and Thomas on the point that one has to be very cautious even in using foreign law with respect to the things American law permits you to. And that’s in treaty interpretation or in conflicts of law because it’s a different system of law.” Either the president is going to have to find himself a new nominee or some senators must decide if they believe what they heard with their own ears.
