Judge Sotomayor emphatically repudiated President Obama’s empathy standard it and said that judges can’t rely on what’s in their hearts. But when Senator Kyl then walked her through her “Latina Judge’s Voice” speech (Seton Hall version, October 2003), she feebly tried to deny the very passages that demonstrate her rejection of the norm of impartiality.
If Judge Sotomayor becomes a justice, she will be unconstrained by precedent. Her professed “fidelity to the law” will be meaningless because her boundless view of judging would give her broad freedom to say that the law is whatever she wishes it to be.