4:52 p.m. – The committee breaks for a 15-minute recess. Liveblogging will resume after the recess in a new post.
4:48 p.m. – Hatch notes that President George H.W. Bush drew a distinction between human empathy and judicial impartiality and asks the nominee her opinion on this.
Sotomayor: “Two Presidents have used the word empathy, and each of them has given it their different meanings. I can’t speak for their choice of the word.” She repeats what she said earlier that “a judge cannot decide cases on the basis of personal feelings or biases.”
Hatch brings up her “Latina Judge’s Voice” speech, noting she gave it at least five times. (The original text of the speech is linked on AUL’s Sotomayor411.com.) “Do you believe that transcending personal prejudices is a judicial duty or” — as she said in her speech — “an aspiration?”
Sotomayor says it’s an aspiration in that one should recognize how one is influenced by one’s experiences.
Hatch reads further into her speech where she stresses again that impartiality is an “aspiration.”
Sotomayor insists she really believes impartiality is a “duty.”
4:39 p.m. – Hatch is quizzing the nominee on her judicial philosophy. “Can the [high] court change the meaning of the words in the Constitution?”
Sotomayor says the court can change the way certain meanings are applied to words, not the meanings of the words themselves. She is choosing her words very carefully.
4:31 p.m. – Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) begins questioning.
4:27 p.m. – Kohl observes that the Supreme Court justices choose to hear only about 1 percent of the cases brought to them. “How will you determine which cases are so important as to warrant review by the Supreme Court?”
Sotomayor observes that one aspect of the factors the court considers is disagreement among the circuit courts. But she will not give a more specific answer to a question asking her opinion “in the abstract.”
4:20 p.m. – Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) is questioning the nominee now. Sotomayor is giving a long discourse on Brown vs. Board of Education.
4:05 p.m. – Sotomayor says she’d like to make clear what is a fundamental right. (Because senators and other ordinary people apparently don’t understand, I presume.) “Fundamental is a legal term” on whether a particular constitutional provision “binds the states or not,” she says.
Sessions says he knows what the legal means, “and that’s hugely important. Because if it’s not a fundamental right, it’s not incorporated” into state law.
4:05 p.m. – Sessions is pressing Sotomayor on whether any other court said the right to bear arms is “not a fundamental right.” Sotomayor says Judge Easterbrook on the Seventh Circuit said so. Sessions disagrees.
3:59 p.m. – Sessions asks, isn’t it true that if her Maloney decision held, it would fail to protect the right of people to keep and bear arms in every state in America?
Sotomayor: “I’m not familiar enough with the regulations in all 50 states …” Cop-out.
3:56 p.m. – Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the committee, is questioning Sotomayor on the “wise Latina woman” comment.
Sotomayor: “Senator, I want to give you complete assurance that I agree with Sen. Hatch on his definition of activism” — that justices should not decide according to personal biases. “My rhetorical device failed.”
As Sen. Cornyn just observed in a blogger briefing, which I’ll post about shortly, Sotomayor notably refuses to simply apologize for her controversial past statements. She’s not showing any contrition. She simply says her statements “failed” to achieve their desired result.
