Supreme denial

Watching some of the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, it seems like both she and GOP senators are trying to dance on a pin by denying that people's personal views and life experience affect their view of the law. Judges may try to separate that out, but personal views and how they view the law OBVIOUSLY influence judges — otherwise they'd agree all the time. GOP Senator Lindsay Graham, from S.C., breaks through the denial and offers a dose of reality yesterday. Here's what he said, reported by Politico.com:

".....Graham also pulled the curtain back a bit on what he suggested was the artificiality of statements by Sotomayor and senators on both sides of the aisle that good judges simply apply the rule of law without any regard to their personal views.

“You hire judges for their judgment, not their personal views or what their sense of what the outcome should be. You hire--you appoint judges for the purpose of understanding whether they respect law, whether they respect precedent,” Sotomayor said Thursday.

“I don't doubt that you respect the law, but you're going to be asked, along with eight other colleagues, if you get on the court, to render a decision as to whether or not the Second Amendment is a fundamental right shared by the American people,” Graham replied. “There is no subjective judgment there?”

After Sotomayor launched into a lengthy answer about “stare decisis” and “incorporation,” Graham reiterated his view that legal principles alone would not dictate the result—a view strikingly similar to President Barack Obama stance that a judge’s “heart” would control in 5 % of cases.

“I do believe, at the end of the day, you're not going to find a law book that tells you whether or not a fundamental right exists vis-a-vis the Second Amendment, that you're going to have to rely upon your view of America, who we are, how far we've come and where we're going to go in our relationship to gun ownership,” Graham said. “You may not agree with that, but I believe that's what you’re going to do, and I believe that's what every other justice is going to do.”

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