Sotomayor confirmation hearing

After a 12-hour “debate” yesterday during which senators largely repeated the same arguments for and against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor that we heard during her confirmation hearing, the Senate is set to vote on the nominee today.
Although there’s no question that Sotomayor will be confirmed, she’s expected to receive only about ten Republican votes, [...]

As the Senate begins deliberation today on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the outcome of the vote is pretty clear. As the Los Angeles Times points out, “the only remaining questions are whether the National Rifle Assn. can claim to have swayed votes against her and whether President Obama can claim [...]

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), after saying last week that he was undecided on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, now says he will vote to confirm her for a seat on the high court.
“I plan to support her,” Nelson told a reporter for the Lincoln Journal Star.

As might have been predicted from the tone of his questioning toward the end of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing last week, Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) came out in her support this afternoon.
“I feel this is the right vote for me, and quite frankly, for the country,” Graham said on the Senate floor, TPM [...]

Perhaps unintentionally, the written followup questions from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor make a strong case that consideration of foreign law in the debate over the Second Amendment would doom Republican efforts to read a “fundamental right” to gun ownership into the Constitution.
As Sessions pointed out in his question:
Many countries [...]

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is winning over more Republicans every day. As I noted yesterday, by the end of the hearing Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) was sounding like one of her biggest defenders.
Today, Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) came out with this statement:
I have listened to the testimony of Judge Sonia Sotomayor before the Senate Judiciary [...]

What is “incorporation?”
Among the many legal terms mentioned over the last four days of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings, the term “incorporation,” when it comes to the Second Amendment right to bear arms, is probably the most confusing.
Incorporation in this context refers to whether the Bill of Rights applies to the states, as [...]

Here’s an interesting discovery by Rick Pildes, law professor at New York University, posted on Balkinization.
Turns out Justice O’Connor wrote an opinion in 1998, joined by her conservative colleagues William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, that cited as persuasive an aspect of foreign law, notwithstanding Republicans’ strong objections to the idea that foreign law [...]

Despite asking some of the harshest and arguably most patronizing questions of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor over the past three days, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) appears to be leaning toward voting for her.
Although he just used his questioning time this morning to charge her with engaging in “identity politics” and making speeches that he [...]