The Senate voted to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court today, making her the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice and just the third woman to sit on the court.
The 55-year-old Sotomayor, who was confirmed by a vote of 68-31, will be sworn in on Saturday at the Court.
Despite strong and vocal opposition from some Senate Republicans, nine GOP senators voted for her confirmation, more than the number of Democrats who supported Justice Samuel Alito, but fewer than the number who crossed party lines to support Chief Justice John Roberts.
Among them were four Republican senators who will be retiring at the end of 2010, including Sens. Kit Bond of Missouri, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Mel Martinez of Florida and George Voinovich of Ohio. Other GOP senators who cast an "aye" vote were Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Richard Lugar of Indiana, and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.
FoxNews was quick to criticize the news and the nomination.
In a rare step of assembling at their desks on the Senate floor for the historic occasion, senators voted to confirm Sotomayor as the 111th justice and third woman to serve on the high court.
Democratic senators praised Sotomayor as a mainstream moderate while Republicans said she'd bring personal bias and a liberal agenda to the bench in a final day of debate over her nomination.
The GOP has decried Obama's call for "empathy" in a justice, painting Sotomayor as the embodiment of an inappropriate standard that would let a judge bring her personal whims and prejudices to the bench.
Her writings and speeches "reflect a belief not just that impartiality is not possible, but that it's not even worth the effort," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader. "In Judge Sotomayor's court, groups that didn't make the cut of preferred groups often found that they ended up on the short end of the empathy standard."
McConnell was not the only disgruntled Republican to speak out, as the discussion became racially charged:
Democrats warned Republicans that they risk a backlash from Hispanic voters -- a growing part of the electorate -- if they oppose her.
"Judge Sotomayor should not be chosen to serve on the court because of her Hispanic heritage, but those who oppose her for fear of her unique life experience do no justice to her or our nation. Their names will be listed in our nation's annals of elected officials one step behind America's historic march forward," said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat.
Republicans bristled at the suggestion that they were not willing to confirm a qualified Hispanic, noting that Democrats used extraordinary measures several years ago to block the confirmation of GOP-nominated Miguel Estrada, a Honduran-born attorney, to a federal appeals court.
GOP senators have said instead that their opposition to Sotomayor is based on her speeches and record, pointing to a few rulings in which they argue she showed disregard for gun rights, property rights and job discrimination claims by white employees. They also cited comments she's made about the role that a judge's background and perspective can play, especially a 2001 speech in which she said she hoped a "wise Latina" would usually make better decisions than a white man.
"I feel very badly that I have to vote negatively -- it's not what I wanted to do when this process started -- but I believe that I'm doing the honorable and right thing," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah prior to Thursday's vote.
What's extraordinary to me is that in light of the vicious massacre targetting women outside Pittsburgh this week, that the GOP would so quickly denounce Sotomayor's views on gun control.
Republicans have been particularly critical of Sotomayor's position on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. She was part of a panel that ruled this year that the amendment doesn't limit state actions -- only federal ones -- in keeping with previous Supreme Court precedent.
But gun rights supporters said her court shouldn't have called the issue "settled law," and they criticized her for refusing during her confirmation hearings to go beyond what the high court has said and declare that the Second Amendment applies to the states.
And so it goes...
