Opinion: Sotomayor hearings: On abortion

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Sen. John Cornyn asked Judge Sotomayor about a Washington Post story from May. The story said the White House was scrambling to assure liberal groups about her stance on abortion. He said the story quoted George Pavia, a senior partner in the law firm where Sotomayor worked from 1988 to 1992, as saying that support of abortion rights would be in line with Sotomayor’s “generally liberal instincts.”

Quoting Pavia, Cornyn read: “I can guarantee she’ll be for abortion rights.” “On what basis would the White House send a message that abortion-rights groups do not need to worry about how you might rule in a challenge to Roe vs. Wade?”

Sotomayor said she was asked no question by anyone in the White House, including the president, about any single legal issue.

“You just have to look at my record to know that, in cases I address, I follow the law,” she said.

Then why would Pavia say that? asked Cornyn.

Beats me, replied the nominee.

“I never spoke with him about my views on abortion or my views on any social issue.” She noted that she had voted in favor of anti-abortion groups in a case involving the “Mexico City policy,” which forbids the United States from funding foreign groups that provide abortion services.

“Do you agree with his statement that you have generally liberal instincts?” asked Cornyn.

Sotomayor said that if Pavia had been talking about her serving on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, “a board that promoted equal opportunity for people….you could talk about that being a liberal instinct in the sense that I promote equal opportunity in America and attempts to ensure that.”

But, she added, she’s pretty sure that Pavia has not read a thing she’s written for 17 years because “he is a corporate litigator and my experience with corporate litigators is that they only look at the law when it affects the matter before them.”

Cornyn returned to a topic that dominated part of Tuesday’s hearing, the New Haven, Conn., firefighters case. He wanted to know, as other Republican senators did yesterday, why she and her fellow appellate court judges upheld the ruling in that case (recently reversed by a split Supreme Court) with a brief order, rather than a full review. Sotomayor said the appellate-court panel often ruled that way, particularly when it was upholding a lower-court decision, one that had generated in this case a 78-page decision.

The workload, she said, was such that 75% of the court’s decisions are decided that way.

-- Robin Abcarian and Kate Linthicum

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