Senate confirms Sonia Sotomayor to Supreme Court
Voting largely along party lines, the Senate has confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the 111th justice of the Supreme Court, the New York Times reports. She will be the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the court. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was expected to administer the oath of office to Judge Sotomayor, 55, in the next few days, with a formal ceremony likely in September. She succeeds Justice David H. Souter, who retired in June. Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation was never in much doubt, given Democrats’ numerical advantage in the Senate. But the final vote—68 to 31—represented a partisan divide. No Democrat voted against her, while all but 9 of the chamber’s 40 Republicans did so. During three days of debate on the Senate floor, Republicans labeled Judge Sotomayor a liberal judicial activist, decrying several of her speeches about diversity and the nature of judgments, as well as her votes in cases involving Second Amendment rights, property rights and a reverse-discrimination claim brought by white firefighters in New Haven. But Democrats portrayed Judge Sotomayor as a mainstream and qualified judge whose life — rising from a childhood in a Bronx housing project to the Ivy League and now the Supreme Court—is a classic American success story. And they called her judicial record moderate and mainstream.
Source: New York Times, 8/6/09, By Charlie Savage
[Editor’s Note: Judge Sotomayor’s answers to written questions from several Senators, and the responses of other organizations to the Senators’ questions to them about the nomination, are below. On Education Week’s School Law Blog, reporter and guest blogger Eric Robelen provides letters submitted in support of the nomination by the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and disability rights advocates, as well as and a letter in opposition from the American Association of Christian Schools. Background from Education Week and other sources on the nomination and Judge Sotomayor’s record on issues relating to public education is at the last link.]
Sotomayor responses to Senate questions
Education Week School Law Blog on education groups and Sotomayor
NSBA School Law pages on Sotomayor and education