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If nomination hearings are political theater, then a Supreme Court nomination hearing must rank as Capitol Hill's version of Broadway (or at times, the Met.) In that context, Judge Sonia Sotomayor's star turn ranks as one of the most highly-anticipated debuts in American political history. As I am the peculiar sort of bird who has tried to catch every one of these hearings since the days of the 1987 Robert Bork melodrama, I was disappointed that workaday demands kept me from watching yesterday's opening acts in real time.
As with a prologue the first day tells you whether the production you about to experience is more Joseph Papp or Andrew Lloyd Webber. Or in this case, given the ways in which race, gender and class have dominated the discourse leading up to the hearings, the more appropriate analogy might have been to the old Negro Ensemble Company, with Robert Hooks as the young black President and say, Rita Moreno as the whip-smart nominee.. Knowing and respecting Sotomayor as I do, it was a relief to know that this will not be the lurid spectacle formally billed as the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. That 1991 debacle seemed to have come straight out of George Wolfe's Colored Museum.
Fortunately, a dedicated corps of expert live-bloggers and analysts is producing a collection of reportage and commentary that was almost as good as being there. I realize my theater analogy is overworked, but it's the best way that I can characterize my reactions to the coverage so far. Here, then is a roundup of the most interesting coverage I've seen two days of hearings.
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The previews
NPR's Tell Me More featured a segment with three distinguished African American law professors handicapping the hearings: Charles Ogletree and Lani Guinier of Harvard Law School, and Linda Green from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Having served as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee in the late 1980s, Green had useful things to say about the ways in which the Senators use the hearings to score political points. With even her staunchest Republican critics acknowledging the near-certainty of Sotomayor's confirmation, the goal was more to ensure that the most frequently-cited criticisms of the Judge are on the record. [Like the LatinoPolitics blog, the law professors dismissed those criticisms as a bum rap. Meanwhile, Guinier, whose 1993 nomination as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights was withdrawn before hearings took place, explained what's wrong with critics reading anti-white bias into Sotomayor's role in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano. She elaborated on her position in more detail in this New York Times op-ed.
For pure snark, it's hard to beat Scarecrow's post on Firedoglake, "NYT Collects Silly Questions to Ask Sotomayor." The New York Times article under attack offers an array of experts and opportunity to come up with questions they thought should be ask. Scarecrow translated this pair of questions from law prof/blogger Ann Althouse:
. When you said you hoped that “a wise Latina” would make better judicial decisions, did you mean it as a pleasantry aimed at people who had invited you to speak about diversity or will you now defend the idea that decision-making on the Supreme Court is enhanced by an array of justices representing different backgrounds?2. If a diverse array of justices is desirable, should we not be concerned that if you are confirmed, six out of the nine justices will be Roman Catholics, or is it somehow wrong to start paying attention to the extreme overrepresentation of Catholicism on the court at the moment when we have our first Hispanic nominee?
into:
1. You're proof that a wise Latina is wiser than I am, aren't you?2. Since you're a Catholic and we need diversity, do you agree with me that Scalia and Alito should immediately
