Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, had a lot to say about "the wise Latina" on the floor of the upper chamber earlier today.
Here is a snippet, click on the video below for the entire speech:
The debate over Judge Sotomayor's nomination began with President Obama’s radical new vision for America's court system. According to the President, all nominees to the federal bench would now have to meet an "empathy standard." This standard requires judges to reach their most difficult and important decisions through the "depth and breadth of [their] empathy," and "their broader vision of what America should be."
This is a stunning ideology. It turns law into politics. The President of the United States is breaking with centuries of American legal tradition, to enter a new era where a judge’s personal feelings about a case are as important as the Constitution itself.
The President's empathy standard is much more than a rhetorical flourish. It is a dangerous judicial philosophy where judges base their rulings on their social, personal and political views. It is an attempt to sell an old, discredited activist philosophy by marketing it under a new label.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) had this to say about "Ms. Empathy":
Judge Sotomayor's record on complex constitutional cases concerns me even more — because 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. And the consequences were real.Technorati tags:
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