Kyl goes on offensive in opening statement
Most Court watchers tuning in today for the start of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings may have been looking for Sen. Jeff Sessions to bring the GOP heat. But it was Sen. Jon Kyl who minced no words about his opposition to Sotomayor’s nomination based on her past statements.
“From what she has said, she appears to believe that her role is not constrained to objectively decide who wins based on the weight of the law, but who, in her opinion, should win,” Kyl said during his opening statement today. “The factors that will influence her decisions apparently include her ‘gender and Latina heritage’ and foreign legal concepts that get her ‘creative juices going.’”
Kyl also blasted President Barack Obama for calling empathy a key quality for a Supreme Court justice. “Unfortunately, a very important person has decided it is time for change-time for a new kind of judge; one who will apply a different standard of judging, including employment of his or her empathy for one of the parties to the dispute. That person is President Obama.”
Kyl continued:
“Of course, every person should have empathy, and in certain situations, such as sentencing, it may not be wrong for judges to be empathetic. The problem arises when empathy and other biases or prejudices that are ‘in the judge’s heart’ become ‘the critical ingredient’ to deciding cases. As [9th Circuit] Judge [Richard] Paez explained, a judge’s prejudices, biases, and passions should not be embraced-they must be ‘set aside’ so that a judge can render an impartial decision as required by the judicial oath and as parties before the court expect.”
