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Opinion: Sotomayor hearings: Refusing to be pinned down

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Judge Sonia Sotomayor may be indeed impartial and even-handed: She hasn’t given senators from either party much to work with.

First she bobbed and weaved with Sen. Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican, over property rights and environmental cases, avoiding articulating a specific judicial standard for when a government taking is appropriate when private uses are involved.

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Then she has similarly disappointed Democratic Sen. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin by declining to offer a critique of Bush administration anti-terrorism policies that were tossed by the Supreme Court. In fact, she refused to label such policies ‘mistakes,’ even though some were ruled unconstitutional. Judges don’t look at actions, that way, she counseled.

But one interesting point: Sotomayor affirmatively stated that she would sit out a Supreme Court review of Maloney vs. Cuomo, a gun rights case for which she has been criticized by Republicans, if the court takes the case. But she didn’t go far as to say she would recuse herself from a similar case, such as one out of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago, if that were to be taken up by the high court.

If the court does, indeed, take up Maloney, then Republicans might have less to worry about.

For a moment, that was one of the most definitive moments of the day, but it lasted only a moment. It seems clear now, as Sotomayor showed this morning with Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), that she does not intend to spell out her personal philosophy with regard to specific issues that may come before the high court (which could be just about anything, of course).

-- James Oliphant

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