Leahy: Sotomayor would follow the law

UPDATED:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor sought Tuesday to hit back against GOP charges that she would let her background dictate her rulings, telling senators in both parties that she would follow the law as a justice.

In private meetings that marked her Capitol Hill debut, Sotomayor, who would be the high court’s first Hispanic and its third woman, explained her views of a judge’s role and the impact of her life experiences to leaders of the Judiciary Committee, which will have the first crack at weighing her confirmation.

“Ultimately and completely, a judge has to follow the law no matter what their upbringing has been,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the panel chairman, quoted President Barack Obama’s nominee as saying in their closed-door session on Capitol Hill.

Leahy had asked Sotomayor, 54, what she meant when she said in 2001 that she hoped her decisions as a “wise Latina” would be better than those of a white male who hadn’t had the same experiences. Prominent Republicans have cited the 2001 remark to call her a racist.

Leahy said the judge told him: “Of course one’s life experience shapes who you are, but … as a judge, you follow the law.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions, of Alabama, the top Republican on the committee, said Sotomayor used those words with him as well, but he appeared to come away from the meetings unconvinced about Sotomayor’s approach and whether she would be an “activist” who tried to set policy from the bench.

“She used those words, and of course the question is what is the law? How does a judge find the law, and what approach to statutory construction do they utilize?” Sessions said.

Sessions, who is to meet Wednesday with Leahy to discuss scheduling Sotomayor’s confirmation process, said he thought hearings should wait until September.

“I don’t think it’s good to rush,” he said.

Leahy called the criticism against Sotomayor “among the most vicious attacks that have been received by anybody” and said the rhetoric demands hearings, “sooner than later.” Democrats hope to begin the sessions as early as the first full week of July.

Leahy said he asked the judge whether he could repeat publicly what she told him privately during their meeting about how her personal experiences as the New York-born daughter of Puerto Rican parents who was reared in a housing project and went on to Princeton and Yale before ascending to the highest legal echelons would shape her rulings.

Leahy quoted Sotomayor as saying, “There’s not one law for one race or another. There’s not one law for one color or another. There’s not one law for rich, a different one for poor. There’s only one law.”

Radio host Rush Limbaugh and former House Speaker New Gingrich have both branded Sotomayor a racist, and Limbaugh went on to compare choosing her for the high court to nominating former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke.

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