Saturday, February 11th, 2012

Sotomayor Admits Confirmation Hearings Were Scripted

By Daphne Eviatar
Monday, October 19, 2009 at 10:37 am

This will hardly come as a surprise to anyone who watched the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in which her answers were careful to reveal as little as possible about her views on anything, but it’s still rare for a new justice to admit that her hearings were tightly scripted, with administration officials instructing her not only on how to answer questions but on the details of what she should wear.

Sotomayor didn’t intend to make a public announcement about this: she made the comments privately at a Yale Law School 30th reunion event, which she asked that reporters not be allowed to attend. State Sen. Ed Meyer, however, who also attended the event, told a reporter for the New Haven Register that Sotomayor “gave the most astounding account of how the president selected her,” talked about shopping for clothes to wear to the acceptance ceremony, and reported how government officials instead told her to bring five suits. They would tell her which one she should wear.

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Eric_Jaffa
Comment posted October 19, 2009 @ 2:46 pm

Where does it say in that article that “administration officials instruct(ed) her…how to answer questions”?

YLS Alum
Comment posted October 21, 2009 @ 4:03 pm

I was present for the entire Sotomayor event at Yale, and your headline is false. And you can't blame it on press reports, since nothing in the press reports suggested she talked about the hearings. She said nothing about the hearings. Indeed, her comments pertained entirely to the period up to the announcement of her nomination, and dealt only with the selection process from the perspective of her personal experience. She, quite appropriately, sad nothing about the substance of her discussions with the President. She said NOTHING about the confirmation process following her nomination, including the hearings. There was absolutely nothing from her remarks to suggest that she took direction on legal substance from the White House. BTW, she came across as a very intelligent legal scholar who can think for herself. The ONLY thing she said about specific White House involvement was the remark about the suits. That's perfectly understandable; a judge isn't used to the glare of national media attention and doesn't necessarily know how she will best appear on camera. I suspect every administration in the last generation has helped its high-profile nominees deal with media issues like this. No doubt, had she picked a less television-friendly outfit than she did, the thuggish nativist Republican ranters on this site would have been sniping about the taste of a tacky Latina from the Barrio. You people are pathetic.

Sotomayor Admits Confirmation Hearings Were Scripted

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