Jump to content

Sonia Sotomayor confirmed in US Senate vote

Edit links
Checked
From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Related articles
Crime and law
Crime and law
Collaborate!
Sonia Sotomayor

A 68–31 vote by the United States Senate confirmed Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court this afternoon.

Sotomayor, appointed to fill the seat vacated by Justice David Souter, is the first Latina woman, and third woman in history, to join the Supreme Court. The justice faced an easy confirmation in a senate controlled by the Democrats; all 31 votes against her confirmation came from Republicans. Two major controversies were raised during the confirmation hearings: the propriety of Sotomayor's comments while a circuit court judge in which she spoke of herself as a "wise Latina", better able to make fair judgments than a white male, raised objections from conservative Republicans over accusations of bias; while the overturning by the Supreme Court of Sotomayor's decision in Ricci v. DeStefano led others to question whether the justice was of a legal caliber sufficient to sit on the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor nevertheless accumulated endorsements from both sides of the aisle, with nine Republicans, including South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham, voting with the Democrats to accept Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee.

The retirement of Souter and his replacement with Sotomayor will not shift the ideological balance of the Supreme Court, with Sotomayor likely to join Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer as part of the court's informal liberal wing.


Sources

Share this:  E-mail this story Share on Facebook Share on reddit.com Share on LinkedIn.com Share on twitter.com


This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License


Retrieved from "https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Sonia_Sotomayor_confirmed_in_US_Senate_vote&oldid=4826305"