[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 85 (Tuesday, June 9, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6348-S6349]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          CONFIRMATION PROCESS

  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I wish to associate myself with the remarks 
and concerns expressed earlier by both the Judiciary Committee's 
ranking member, Senator Sessions, and the distinguished Republican 
leader and whip, Senators McConnell and Kyl.
  The White House talking points tell us that the Supreme Court 
nomination, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, has more Federal judicial experience 
than any Supreme Court nominee in a century. My friends on the other 
side of the aisle have taken, used, and aggressively circulated these 
talking points. I assume by stressing judicial experience they are 
saying that this overwhelmingly deep, broad, and vast judicial record 
provides the basis on which to judge the nominee's fitness for the 
Supreme Court. Well, that coin has two sides. The flip side is that a 
17-year judicial career that has produced thousands of judicial 
decisions takes time to evaluate adequately and properly to consider. 
The question is whether the majority is at all interested in a genuine, 
serious, deliberative process by which the Senate can fulfill one of 
our most important constitutional responsibilities. This process should 
be fair and thorough. Instead, it is being rigged and rushed for no 
apparent reason other than that the majority can do so.
  This process should be bipartisan, and instead it is becoming 
entirely partisan. The ranking member was not even given the very same 
courtesy that the chairman was given when he was in that position at 
the time of the previous Supreme Court nominations.
  Let me focus on the process followed to consider the previous Supreme 
Court nominee, Justice Samuel Alito. He had served on the U.S. Court of 
Appeals for the Third Circuit for more than 15 years when he was 
nominated to the Supreme Court. This is 5 years longer than Judge 
Sotomayor has served on the Second Circuit and nearly the same as Judge 
Sotomayor's combined judicial service on both the district and circuit 
courts.
  The other party demanded and was granted 70 days from the 
announcement of the nomination to the hearing to study then-Judge 
Alito's record. The Senator from Pennsylvania, Mr. Specter, was 
chairman at the time. He made no unilateral partisan announcements. He 
imposed no truncated, limited timeframe. No, he consulted the ranking 
member, and they agreed there would be 70 days to study that voluminous 
judicial record.
  Oh, what a difference an election makes. With the unilateral partisan 
edict announced today by the chairman, we are being given only 48 days 
to study the same lengthy record. We are told we must consider the 
largest judicial record in a century in the shortest time in modern 
memory, and that is simply not enough. It is not enough to do the job 
right, and I would remind my friends on the other side that it was 
their leaders who once said that it is more important to do it right 
than to do it fast. That was when there was a Republican President and 
a Republican Senate. Are we to assume from the unilateral imposition of 
a stunted and inadequate process that the majority today no longer 
cares that the confirmation process be done right, only that it be done 
fast?

[[Page S6349]]

  The chairman has actually suggested that he really has no choice, 
that some intemperate criticism by a few people has somehow forced his 
hand. He cannot be serious about this. This nominee has the full force 
and weight of no less than the entire administration of a currently 
popular President, a compliant media, and the largest partisan 
congressional majority in decades to come to her defense. Interest 
groups are mobilizing, lobbying campaigns are in full swing, Web sites 
are already in operation. With all of that, are we to believe a few 
ill-considered remarks by a few people outside this body are enough to 
cut the confirmation process off at the knees? Are we to believe this 
is all it takes to set aside fairness, to undercut the ability of the 
Senate to do its confirmation duty, and to inject this degree of 
partisanship and rancor into the process? Give me a break.
  This is choice, plain and simple, and it is the wrong choice. The 
distinguished Senator from New York, Mr. Schumer, has said that 
Senators on our side of the aisle oppose this nominee at their peril, 
as if there is any peril in fairly applying basic principles and 
standards to this as well as to other nominees. But the distinguished 
majority leader has apparently said the same thing to Senators on this 
side of the aisle, literally daring any of them to vote against this 
nominee. That is a strange tactic, indeed, especially so publicly and 
so early on in the process. It makes me wonder whether there are 
concerns, even on the majority side, that the leadership simply cannot 
allow to be expressed.
  I urge my friends on the other side to reconsider and not be 
intimidated and not be pushed around. There is more than enough time to 
do the confirmation job right, to have a fair and thorough process that 
can have a confirmed Justice in place when the Supreme Court begins its 
term in October. There is no need gratuitously to further politicize 
the confirmation process. Injecting such partisanship at the beginning 
easily can result in greater conflict and division further down the 
confirmation road, and that is not good for Judge Sotomayor or anybody 
else in this body. That is not in the best tradition of the Senate, it 
is not how the Supreme Court nominations have been considered in the 
past, and it is not the way we should do this today.
  I have been informed there have been some 4,000 decisions. My gosh, 
it is going to take some time to go through those decisions.
  I believe we ought to be fair in this body, and fairness means giving 
enough time to be able to do the job properly and to get it done within 
a reasonable period of time and not be pushed in ways that really don't 
make sense.

                          ____________________