____________________________________ From: or...@hatchforsenate.com Reply-to: r.1.91.189533.2b520ef183381bb6-wleed3=aol....@hatchforsenate.com To: wle...@aol.com Sent: 8/6/2009 6:21:05 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time Subj: A few more reasons why I voted No
(http://hatch.rootshq.com/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=139&qid=189533) William -- This morning, before the confirmation vote on Judge Sotomayor, I addressed a few more reasons why I voted "No" on her nomination. Short version of my speech: Judge Sotomayor's record simply creates too many conflicts with principles about the judiciary in which I deeply believe. I hope that on the Supreme Court, Judge Sotomayor will take an objective, modest, and restrained approach to interpreting and applying written law. I hope that she actively defends her impartiality against subjective influences such as personal sympathies and prejudices. And I hope that she sees the Constitution, both its words and its meaning, as something that she must follow rather than something she can change. Because the record does not convince me that Judge Sotomayor holds those views today, I could not her support appointment to the Supreme Court. My full speech on the Senate floor is pasted below. I'd appreciate it if you would share your thoughts by replying to this email. Sincerely, Senator Orrin Hatch P.S. Take a moment to read my comments and see how times have changed since the Democrats unfairly filibustered Miguel Estrada. Senators and grassroots groups, including Hispanic organizations, who today say that a good resume, rich life story, and ethnic heritage make a compelling confirmation case opposed even holding a vote for Mr. Estrada. ____________________________________ Statement of Sen. Orrin G. Hatch Before the United States Senate Regarding the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court August 6, 2009 On Tuesday, I explained some of the reasons why I cannot support the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter and I will mention a few others today. Her record simply creates too many conflicts with principles about the judiciary in which I deeply believe. I wish President Obama had chosen a Hispanic nominee whom all Senators could support. During the debate this week, many of my Democratic friends have spent time reading Judge Sotomayor's resume rather than reviewing her record. Nearly every speaker on the other side, for example, has repeated the talking point that she has more federal judicial experience than any Supreme Court no minee in a century. I know that she does, and I respect her for it. But Justice Samuel Alito had only one less year of federal judicial experience, and actually had five more years on the U.S. Court of Appeals, when he was nominated. He too had been a prosecutor, and he too had received a unanimous well-qualified rating from the ABA. Yet 19 current Democratic Senators voted to filibuster his nomination, and 35 voted against confirmation. Other Senators emphasize the importance of appointing someone with Judge Sotomayor's inspiring life story and ethnic heritage. Once again, I do not disagree. Yet she is being treated with far more dignity and respect than was Miguel Estrada, a highly qualified Hispanic nominee with an inspiring life story. The Senate, for example, will today actually vote on Judge Sotomayor's nomination. In 2003, for the first time in American history, this body was prevented from voting at all on the Estrada nomination, even though he had majority support. Senators and grassroots groups, including Hispanic organizations, who today say that a good resume, rich life story, and ethnic heritage make a compelling confirmation case for Judge Sotomayor opposed even holding an up-or-down vote for Mr. Estrada. The treatment of Miguel Estrada was unfair and disgraceful toward the nominee and damaging to the traditions and practice of this body. My Democratic colleagues want people to believe that the concerns about the Sotomayor nomination are limited to one speech and one case. Some of them have said as much. At the same time, they say that our review should be limited to only certain parts of the nominee's record. As I have done with past nominees, however, I examined Judge Sotomayor's entire record for insight into her judicial philosophy. In addition to the controversial speeches that I discussed on Tuesday, Judge Sotomayor gave a speech at Suffolk University Law School which was later published in that school's law review. She embraced the idea that the law is indefinite, impermanent, and experimental. She rejected what she called "the public myth that law can be certain and stable." She said that judges may, in their decisions, develop novel approaches and legal frameworks that push the law in new directions. Judge Sotomayor's speeches and articles, then, present something of a perfect judicial storm in which her views of judging meet her views of the law. Combine partiality and subjectivity in judging with uncertainty and instability in the law, and the result is an activist judicial philosophy that I cannot support and that the American people reject. My Democratic colleagues will no doubt quickly say that Judge Sotomayor's cases do not reflect that judicial philosophy. But remember that appeals court judges are bound by Supreme Court precedent. On the Supreme Court, Justice Sotomayor will help fashion the precedents that today bind Judge Sotomayor. That makes the rest of her views -- expressed, I might add, while she has been a sitting judge -- much more relevant to her future on the Supreme Court than to her current position on the appeals court. Nonetheless, Judge Sotomayor has made plenty of troubling decisions on the appeals court. On Tuesday, for example, I discussed the case of Didden v. Village of Port Chester, in which Judge Sotomayor refused to give a man his day in court whose property was taken and given to a developer. She came to the bizarre conclusion that Mr. Didden should have sued before his property was even taken. In Kelo v. City of New London, the Supreme Court held that general economic development can constitute the public use that the Fifth Amendment says justifies the taking of private property. We hear a lot these days that judges should appreciate how their decisions affect people. When the Court in Kelo greatly expanded the government's power to take private property, the San Francisco Chronicle said that the decision might turn the American dream of home ownership on its head. And one Washington Post headline after the decision read: Court Ruling Leaves Poor at Greatest Risk. This decision was devastating not only for the right to private property in general, but for individual homeowners in particular. The decision in Kelo was issued after the briefing and argument in Didden but before Judge Sotomayor had issued her decision. Even though Kelo was a landmark decision that dramatically changed the law of takings, she did not ask for re-briefing or re-argument. Instead, it took her more than a year to issue a cursory four-paragraph opinion that not only made it even easier for the government to take property, but also severely limited the ability of property owners to challenge the taking of their property in court. I and other Senators have already discussed Judge Sotomayor's troubling decisions regarding the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. She has applied the wrong legal standard to conclude that the Second Amendment does not keep state and local government from restricting the right to bear arms. And she has gratuitously held that the right to bear arms is so insignificant that virtually any reason is sufficient to justify a weapons restriction. No federal judge in America has expressed a more narrow, cramped, and limited view of the right to bear arms. My friends on the other side of the aisle have made some creative attempts to downplay these troubling decisions. Perhaps the most curious is the claim that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was created by the Supreme Court. On the one hand, I am baffled why this should bother those who believe in a flexible and shape-shifting Constitution. The Supreme Court, after all, makes up rights all the time -- the right to abortion comes immediately to mind -- without a peep from most of my Democratic friends. But the Senator who offered this strange theory should simply read the Constitution. The right to keep and bear arms is right there in black and white. Perhaps he is instead referring to the Supreme Court's recognition last year that the right to bear arms is an individual rather than a collective right. Perhaps that is what he believes the Supreme Court created. But the Second Amendment says that the right to bear arms is a right of "the people." The Fourth Amendment says the same thing about the right against unreasonable searches and seizures. It, too, is a right of "the people." Does any Senator doubt that the Fourth Amendment protects an individual right? Does the Senator who believes the Supreme Court made up the individual right to bear arms believe that the Supreme Court made up the individual right to be free from unreasonable government searches? When I chaired the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution in 1982, we published a report on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. It thoroughly examined the long and rich history of this right, which pre-dates the Constitution itself. As the Supreme Court has recognized, it was a fundamental individual right of Englishmen at the time of America's founding which the Second Amendment merely codified. Justice Joseph Story, in his classic Commentaries on the Constitution, called this right "the palladium of the liberties of the republic." Our report showed definitively that the right to bear arms is indeed both fundamental and individual. The Supreme Court may have taken a long time to recognize this constitutional fact, but it made up nothing in doing so. I ask consent that this report be printed in the record following my remarks. Finally, let me describe one other matter that arose during the hearing which I found very troubling. Prior to her judicial service, Judge Sotomayor was closely associated with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, a respected civil rights organization. From 1980 to 1992, Judge Sotomayor held at least 11 different leadership positions with the Fund, including serving as a member of both its board of directors and executive committee, and as both a member and chairman of its litigation committee. In a 1992 profile, the New York Times described Judge Sotomayor as a top policy maker with the Fund. Other articles and profiles in the Times and Associated Press say that she met frequently with the legal staff, reviewed the status of pending cases and briefed the board about them, and was an involved and ardent supporter of the Fund's legal efforts. These descriptions relied upon and quoted lawyers with whom she worked at the Fund. Minutes from the Fund's litigation committee specifically describe Judge Sotomayor reviewing the Fund's litigation strategy and cases. At the hearing, I asked Judge Sotomayor whether she had been aware of friend-of-the-court briefs that the Fund filed in several high-profile Supreme Court abortion cases. I asked her about that because those briefs made arguments that can only be described as extreme. The Fund, for example, compared the refusal to pay for abortions with taxpayers' Medicaid funds to oppression of blacks symbolized by the Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision. The Fund opposed any and all abortion restrictions, including laws requiring that parents be informed before their young daughters have an abortion. The Fund even argued that the First Amendment right to freely exercise religion somehow undermines parental notification laws. When I asked Judge Sotomayor about these briefs and arguments, I made absolutely clear that I was asking only about whether she knew about and agreed with them at the time the briefs were filed. I was not asking her even about her current views, let alone any position or approach she might take in the future. Judge Sotomayor told me that, at the time, she did not know the Fund was filing those briefs or making those arguments. At times, she used what appeared to be the prepared talking point that she had not "reviewed the briefs." But in answering my questions, she went much further than that and said: "Obviously [the Fund] was involved in litigation, so I knew generally they were filing briefs. But I wouldn't know until after the fact that the brief was actually filed." To be clear, Judge Sotomayor said that she never knew until after a brief had already been filed what arguments were made in the brief or even that it had been filed at all. I was shocked at this response and, frankly, find this claim very difficult to believe. How can a leader at a legal defense fund, who is actively working with the legal staff, briefing the board about pending cases, and an involved supporter of the Fund's legal efforts be completely out of the loop about the briefs the Fund is filing and the arguments the Fund is making? Did her discussions with the legal team about pending cases skip these high-profile Supreme Court cases? Did she brief the board about everything but these abortion briefs? The six abortion cases in which the Fund filed briefs were among the most visible cases on the Supreme Court docket. The 1989 case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, for example, attracted a record 78 different friend-of-the-court briefs, evidence that it was one of the most anticipated cases in decades. Virtually everyone in the public interest legal world, especially at civil rights groups, had it at the top of their watch list. And yet Judge Sotomayor would have us believe that, despite her leadership positions and active involvement with the Fund's cases and legal strategy, she was completely unaware that the Fund filed a brief in Webster until after the fact. In other words, she knew no more than an outsider reading the newspaper about the Fund's briefs and arguments in high-profile Supreme Court cases about hot-button social issues. That is simply implausible. When I met with Hispanic leaders and groups during the confirmation process, their common message was that Senators should treat Judge Sotomayor seriously and respectfully. I believe we have done that. But they also insisted that our confirmation decision should be based on the merits, not on race. It was disturbing to hear, therefore, that some of these same groups appeared yesterday with the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee warning about political repercussions of voting against a Hispanic nominee. I ask consent that a column published yesterday in Politico by former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio addressing this issue appear in the record following my remarks. Let me once again return to where I began. One of America's oldest state constitutions opens by asserting what it identifies as essential and unquestionable rights and principles. In their charter, the people of Rhode Island state: "In the words of the Father of his Country, we declare that ‘the basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and alter their constitutions of government; but that the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all." The Constitution belongs to the people. The people established it, and only the people can change it. This essential and unquestionable principle would be a farce if the people could change the words, but judges could change the meaning of those words. Judges would still control the Constitution, and their oath to support and defend it would really be an oath to support and defend themselves. America needs judges who are guided and controlled not by subjective empathy that they find inside themselves, but by objective law that they find outside themselves. I take a generous approach to the confirmation process. I believe that the Senate owes some deference to a President's qualified nominees and that qualifications for judicial service include not only legal experience but, more importantly, judicial philosophy. A judicial nominee must understand and be committed to the proper role and power of judges in our system of government. Evidence for a nominee's judicial philosophy must come from her entire record. I hope that on the Supreme Court, Judge Sotomayor will take an objective, modest, and restrained approach to interpreting and applying written law. I hope that she actively defends her impartiality against subjective influences such as personal sympathies and prejudices. I hope that she sees the Constitution, both its words and its meaning, as something that she must follow rather than something she can change. Because the record does not convince me that she holds those views today, I cannot support her appointment to the Supreme Court. _Link_ (http://hatch.rootshq.com/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=140&qid=189533) _Website_ (http://hatch.rootshq.com/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=141&qid=189533) | _Donate_ (http://hatch.rootshq.com/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=142&qid=18953 3) Paid for by Hatch Election Committee Inc. 175 S. West Temple, Suite 650 | Salt Lake City, UT 84101 This email was sent to: wle...@aol.com _Privacy Policy_ (http://hatch.rootshq.com/administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=143&qid=189533) | _Unsubscribe_ (http://hatch.rootshq.com/index2.php?option=com_civicrm&task=civicrm/mailing/optout&reset =1&jid=91&qid=189533&h=2b520ef183381bb6)
