Beyond the Spin: Ideology plays key role in high court picks

Before Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's choice to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, could get outside the White House gate after the announcement of her nomination, conservatives were already on the attack.

"Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal agenda is more important than the law as written," said Wendy E. Long, counsel to the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network.

This nomination isn't about whether Sotomayor is qualified to sit on the nation's highest court but whether conservatives will get a candidate on the bench who shares their political viewpoint. In fact, they were already poised to oppose any Obama nominee. Ten memorandums from conservative organizations obtained by the New York Times provided the details.

According to the memos, had Appeals Court Judge Diane P. Wood been chosen, she would have been depicted as an outspoken supporter of "abortion, including partial-birth abortion." If Kathleen M. Sullivan, a law professor at Stanford University, had been selected, she would have been derided as a "prominent supporter of homosexual marriage."

Obama and his critics agree, in the words of the president, that judges should have "an understanding that a judge's job is to interpret, not make, law, to approach decisions without any particular ideology or agenda, but rather a commitment to impartial justice; a respect for precedent; and a determination to faithfully apply the law to the facts at hand."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said in a statement: "We will thoroughly examine her record to ensure she understands that the role of a jurist in our democracy is to apply the law evenhandedly, despite their own feelings or personal or political preferences."

Sotomayor has been confirmed as a district judge and as an appellate judge, so there should be no question about whether she understands the role of a jurist. It strikes me as condescending that senators who've never presided over a trial in small-claims court are eager to tell this accomplished woman how judges should behave on the bench.

The truth is that Republicans and Democrats are being less than candid when they give the impression that they prefer judges who operate in a sterile chamber, handing down opinions that do not take into account political considerations.