Sotomayor hearings: The complete transcript -- Day 3, Part 4 of 4

As we often do here on The Ticket, in addition to our own take on politics and events, we are providing a complete transcript of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court for those interested in reading the political participants' own words in full.

The goal, of course, is to provide Ticket readers the opportunity to make their own judgments on the back and forth between the nominee and other witnesses and the interrogating senators -- some setting her up with softballs, others pursuing tougher lines of questioning.

And if you choose, please feel invited to leave your own comments below and participate in the historic confirmation debate over the nomination of the first Latina to the nation's highest court.

Scroll up or down from here for the numerous items other Ticket writers are contributing minute by minute as the drama unfolds in Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington.

A complete cast of committee characters is added to the bottom of this item.

Monday, we published the opening statements of each senator and Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Tuesday, we published the entire day's transcript proceedings in five parts. The links to all those pieces are right here: 

Each committee senator's opening statement.  Sotomayor's opening statement. Part 1 of Tuesday's transcript is available by clicking here. Part 2 of today's transcript is available here. Part 3 is available here. Part 4  of the July 14 Sotomayor transcript is here. And Part 5 is available here.

Part 1 of Wednesday's morning transcript is available here. Part 2 of Wednesday's testimony is available here.  Part 3 of Wednesday is available here. This is the fourth and final part of Wednesday's hearing transcript.

Keep checking back for new updates throughout the hearing and see the variety of items our Ticket writers are producing for you.

— Andrew Malcolm

Don't miss a single Ticket item on any political issue. Click here for Twitter alerts. Or follow us    @latimestot

Continuation of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on Judge Sonia Sotomayor:

SPECTER (cont'd): And Bush v. Gore was probably the biggest -- one of the biggest cases, arguably, the biggest case. More than 100 million people voted in that election, and the presidency was decided by one vote. And Justice Scalia had this to say about irreparable harm: "The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does, in my view, threaten irreparable harm to" -- referring to President Bush or candidate Bush -- "and to the country by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of the election.

"Permitting the court to proceed on that erroneous basis will prevent an account -- an accurate recount from being conducted on a proper basis later."

Hard to understand what recount there was going to be later. I wrote about it at the time, saying....

Sotomayor hearings: Analysis from legal experts

Sonia Sotomayor deftly dodged conservative senators’ efforts to pin her down on her “judicial philosophy” on issues like abortion and gun control, leaving those on both sides of the issues frustrated, said legal experts following the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

But her restraint drew praise from some as evidence that she is a moderate judge who will decide cases on the facts, not preconceived opinions.

Ilya Shapiro
Senior fellow at the conservative-libertarian Cato Institute and editor of its Supreme Court Review

I don’t know if she assuaged anybody’s fears on the big issues. She took a little bit of heat from pro-choice groups about where she stood in the abortion context, and several times the issue came up.... She began every answer with ‘the court has said,’ and went on with explanations of Supreme Court precedents, saying here is the state of the law.

That is non-responsive. The senators have a right to ask what your interpretation of the Constitution is, what your judicial philosophy is, how she understands questions about abortion rights and property rights. Again and again she talks about precedent in painstaking detail. Either she hasn’t thought more deeply about her overall judicial philosophy and just kind of wings it, or she was....

Sotomayor hearings: On religious freedom and choosing Supreme Court cases

Judge Sonia Sotomayor had to dash the hopes of Democratic Sen. Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, who asked her how she would decide what sort of cases the Supreme Court should take up: “One of the standards I would hope you would use,” said Cardin, “is deciding this case for the impact it has on the broader nation.”

Sorry, Senator.

“As I indicated earlier,” said the nominee, “we don’t make policy choices. That means that I would think it inappropriate for a court to choose a case, or for a judge to chose a case, based on some sense of ‘I want this result on society.’ A judge takes a case to decide a legal issue....”

Cardin, still in the extolling mode adopted by Sotomayor’s Democratic fans on the Judiciary Committee, lauded her decision in a federal appeals court case. She had written the opinion upholding the religious rights of a Muslim inmate, who had been denied access to his meals marking the end of Ramadan.

“Freedom of religion truly is an American right,” Cardin said. “Please share with us the importance of that provision in the Constitution and how you would go about dealing with cases that could affect that fundamental right.”

Now here is where we got lost, probably because we are spending half our time writing and half our time listening. Did we miss something?

“I don’t mean to be funny,” said Sotomayor, smiling, “but the court has held that it’s fundamental in the sense of incorporation against the state.”

Lots of lawyers seemed to be chuckling, but we felt the whoosh of air over our heads.

She couldn’t elaborate too much, she said, but the main issue in that case was whether the court erred “in considering whether or not the religious beliefs that this prisoner had was consistent with the established traditional interpretation of the meal at issue, OK? What I was doing was applying the very important Supreme Court precedent that said, it’s the subjective belief of the individual.... We are not asking the court to say whether this is orthodox, but look at the sincerity of the individual’s belief.”

Tomorrow: More grilling by senators. We’re looking forward to watching Sotomayor’s next exchange with the irascible Lindsay Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

--Robin Abcarian

Don't miss a single Ticket item on any political issue. Click here for Twitter alerts. Or follow us    @latimestot

Sotomayor hearings: Gay marriage makes its way into questioning

Finally, same-sex marriage.

The subject was raised indirectly by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). Grassley did not mention same-sex marriage directly, but that was the implication when he asked Sonia Sotomayor about a court ruling that said Minnesota could deny a marriage license to two men. Did she agree, he asked, that the case, Baker vs. Nelson, reserved the question of marriage to the states?

In Baker, the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that two men could be denied a marriage license because Minnesota law limited marriage to men and women.

As she has with other topics, Sotomayor said she couldn’t comment because questions about marriage are pending in many courts and might reach the Supreme Court.

Grassley challenged her on that point. He wondered aloud why she couldn’t comment on Baker because it’s legal precedent. He noted that on Tuesday she said that Roe vs. Wade, which legalized abortion, was an established legal precedent. If she could characterize the status of Roe, he asked, why not Baker?

The judge replied that she had not reviewed Baker in some time but offered to review the case overnight and report on it Thursday. Grassley said he would welcome that.

-- Steve Padilla

Don't miss a single Ticket item on any political issue. Click here for Twitter alerts. Or follow us    @latimestot

Sotomayor hearings: Grassley beats a dead horse but is honest about it

Before his second round of questions, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) told Judge Sonia Sotomayor that he did not want to be "beating a dead horse" but that he would anyway.

Then he proceeded to sift through Sotomayor's speeches. At one point, after reading Sotomayor's words about the law having to adapt to a changing society, he was candid, saying that he believed Sotomayor was saying that as a judge, she would twist the law in any way she sees fit.

"I don't think you'll say that," Grassley said. "But at least you know where I am coming from."

Sotomayor, in fact, did not say that. She said she did not believe the law should be used as a tool to usurp the role of other branches of government but that law adapts as technology and attitudes advance.

--James Oliphant

Don't miss a single Ticket item on any political issue. Click here for Twitter alerts. Or follow us    @latimestot

Photo: Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, questions Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Credit: AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite

Sotomayor hearings: The complete transcript -- Day 3, Part 3

As we often do here on The Ticket, in addition to our own take on politics and events, we are providing a complete transcript of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court for those interested in reading the political participants' own words in full.

The goal, of course, is to provide Ticket readers the opportunity to make their own judgments on the back and forth between the nominee and other witnesses and the interrogating senators -- some setting her up with softballs, others pursuing tougher lines of questioning. And if you choose, please feel invited to leave your own comments below and participate in the historic confirmation debate over the nomination of the first Latina to the nation's highest court.

Scroll up or down from here for the numerous items other Ticket writers are contributing minute by minute as the drama unfolds in Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington.

A complete cast of committee characters is added to the bottom of this item.

Monday, we published the opening statements of each senator and Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Tuesday, we published the entire day's transcript proceedings in five parts. The links to all those pieces are right here: 

Each committee senator's opening statement.  Sotomayor's opening statement. Part 1 of Tuesday's transcript is available by clicking here. Part 2 of today's transcript is available here. Part 3 is available here. Part 4  of the July 14 Sotomayor transcript is here. And Part 5 is available here.

Part 1 of Wednesday's morning transcript is available here. Part 2 of Wednesday's testimony is available here.  Part 3 of Wednesday is available here.

Keep checking back for new updates throughout the hearing and see the variety of items our Ticket writers are producing for you. This Part 3 is the beginning of Wednesday afternoon's proceedings starting off with newly minted Democrat Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, himself a former committee chairman who talks a lot himself. And, courtesy of C-SPAN, we've added a video down below to prove it.

— Andrew Malcolm

Don't miss a single Ticket item on any political issue. Click here for Twitter alerts. Or follow us    @latimestot

CHAIRMAN PATRICK LEAHY: I just discussed this again with Sen. Sessions. We will go first to Sen. Specter, then to Sen. Franken. And then we will recess and go into the other — other room for the closed session. Sen. Specter, of course, is former chairman of this committee, one of the most senior members of the Senate and one of the most experienced. Senator — Sen. Specter?

SPECTER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome back, Judge Sotomayor. You have held up very well. Of all of the proceedings in the Senate, this is the most exacting on the — on the witness. Years ago, as ...

Sotomayor hearings: Again with the empathy

Empathy, one of a few recurring motifs in the (not very fierce) battle over Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the high court, came up again when Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) mentioned the nomination by President George H.W. Bush of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, “a circuit court judge like you.”

Back then, said Hatch, Bush lauded Thomas for a number of things, including his sense of empathy. (And President Obama said one of the qualities he would seek in a Supreme Court justice was that quality.)

But, said Hatch, “President Bush drew a clear distinction between the human quality of empathy and the judicial quality -- or duty -- of impartiality. This is obviously very different than saying a judge’s personal empathy is an essential ingredient in deciding cases. Which is more important?”

Sotomayor, who was first nominated to the bench by Bush in 1991 -- the same year he nominated Thomas to the Supreme Court -- said, “Two presidents have used the word ‘empathy,’ and each has given it their different meanings. And I can’t speak for their choice of the word or make a choice between what meaning is closer to what I believe or not, because I can state what I believe very simply: Life experiences help the process of listening and understanding and argument. The law always directs the result in the case. A judge cannot decide the case based on personal sympathies.”

-- Robin Abcarian

Don't miss a single Ticket item on any political issue. Click here for Twitter alerts. Or follow us    @latimestot

Sotomayor hearings: Orrin Hatch wants to know if it's OK to bend the Constitution

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) queried Judge Sonia Sotomayor about her judicial philosophy as well as the role and power of a judge in the American system of government.

Sotomayor had said Monday in her opening statement that her judicial philosophy could easily be summed in four words: “fidelity to the law.” Good shorthand, he said, but not enough.

He wanted to know whether she thinks that judges can “read new rights into the Constitution.”

“The Constitution creates the rights, it’s immutable,” said Sotomayor.

During her 1998 Senate hearing when she was confirmed for the federal bench, said Hatch, “You said, ‘I don’t believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstances. It says what it says.’ Maybe you could describe some ways the court could bend the Constitution?”

Replied Sotomayor: “I said you can’t. The words are the words. The court can’t be looking to ignore the words or to change them. What it does is apply those words to each situation. I stand by that answer today as I did then.”

“Would you agree the Supreme Court bends the Constitution when it does read rights into the Constitution?” Hatch asked.

Hard to know what Hatch was driving at, exactly, other than an oblique reference to the fact that the Supreme Court has found, for instance, a right to privacy in the Constitution — as in its landmark Roe vs.  Wade decision — though the document does not contain that word.

“Courts can’t change the meaning of the Constitution,” Sotomayor said. “They can apply those words to the facts before them, to see if the facts are within the protection of the Constitutional right at issue.”

Hatch turned to a speech Sotomayor gave in 2006 at the University of Puerto Rico Law School, where she made a distinction between what district courts and circuit — or appellate — courts do.

“You said … ‘the difference between district court judges and circuit court judges is that district court judges do justice for the party, while circuit court judges do justice for society as a whole.’ This is important in light of your comment that the court of appeals is where policy is made. What do Supreme Court justices do justice for?”

She didn’t directly answer the last part of his question, about the Supreme Court, but she did say that “the district court is looking at two parties; the circuit court is looking at the law, and a holding about the law that will affect many people.”

--Robin Abcarian

Don't miss a single Ticket item on any political issue. Click here for Twitter alerts. Or follow us    @latimestot

Photo: Sen. Jeff Sessions, right, confers with Sen. Orrin Hatch. Credit: Mark Wilson / Getty Images.

Sotomayor hearings: Wiggle room on question of precedent

Sonia Sotomayor pledged allegiance to judicial precedent but also left a door open, just slightly, heading into new legal territory.

It happened as she was being questioned by Sen. Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat. The judge said that if she were a Supreme Court justice, she would adhere to previous rulings if the issue in question had been previously brought to the high court.

But then Kohl pointed out that Supreme Court justices “have the authority to depart from precedent” and asked Sotomayor to tell him how she would decide when it is appropriate to do so.

“Changing it should be done cautiously,” she said. But, she agreed, “precedent can’t stand if other things counsel that it should not.”

Sotomayor said she would ask a series of questions when weighing whether to change a precedent. She said she would look to see whether the facts that the court assumed in earlier precedents had changed; she also would question whether the precedents are providing enough guidance to the courts below.

-- Kate Linthicum

Don't miss a single Ticket item on any political issue. Click here for Twitter alerts. Or follow us    @latimestot

Sotomayor hearings: Judge is adamant, Sessions is unconvinced

If some of the exchanges at Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing are starting to sound familiar, well, they are.

And if it sounds like Sotomayor and some Judiciary Committee members are at an impasse, well, that seems to be the case too.

Alabama Republican Jeff Sessions revisited issues he raised Tuesday, saying he remains unconvinced by many of Sotomayor's answers. He once again alluded to the “wise Latina” speech and suggested that it showed Sotomayor believed that sympathies and prejudices should influence a judge’s work.

Sotomayor, once again, said that was not the case. She also said, once again, that the speech was poorly worded and left the left impression that “I believe something I don’t.” She also allowed that the speech left an impression that had offended people. The panel’s ranking Republican member and the judge differed on other issues, including use of foreign law in U.S. courts. Sessions said Sotomayor had argued that foreign law can be used by American judges to render decisions.

She replied, again, that foreign law can be useful for general knowledge — the “dialogue of ideas” — but should not serve as a precedent to guide a ruling in an American court.

Sessions, once more, sounded unconvinced.

-- Steve Padilla

Don't miss a single Ticket item on any political issue. Click here for Twitter alerts. Or follow us    @latimestot