That was a contentious issue at her confirmation hearings, with Republican gun enthusiasts warning that she doesn’t support gun ownership as a “fundamental right.” Democrats — and Sotomayor — argued that she’d never had the opportunity to rule on the issue.  In one case, she’d held that the Second Amendment did not forbid states from regulating gun possession, but she’d ruled based on her reading of what Supreme Court precedent required, she said.

Today, the court announced it would take a new gun case, McDonald v. Chicago, that will directly address the issue that’s so far been left undecided: whether the Second Amendment provides a “fundamental right” that states must respect.

The Chicago law at issue in this case bans virtually all handguns. A previous ruling from the Supreme Court, Heller v. District of Columbia, struck down a similar ban but applied only to the federal government’s authority to regulate handguns.

“To some extent, it’s unsettling,” says Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “You quickly get to view the court as . . . composed of these members, and it becomes kind of hard to think of it as involving anyone else. I suspect it’s like people look at their families.”

“It’s stressful for us because we so admire our colleagues,” adds Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. “We wonder, oh, will it ever be the same?”

“It changes the whole family,” agrees Justice Clarence Thomas. “It’s different. … I have to admit you grow very fond of the court that you spend a long time on. … You get comfortable with that, and then it changes. And now it’s changing again. So the institution, the Nine, is different, the reaction is different. You get to learn each other and you have to start all over, the chemistry is different.”

Although Justice Sotomayor has already participated in some decisions, including a dissent from the court’s refusal to consider a death penalty case involving a potentially innocent man, on Tuesday the new court will hear its first oral arguments, beginning with the much-anticipated campaign finance case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

–

You can follow TWI on Twitter and Facebook.

Of course, Stevens still has time to hire, and there would be no shortage of brilliant recent law grads eager to fill those spots. But traditionally, that hiring his done more than a year in advance.

If Stevens were to retire, it would likely not fundamentally alter the ideological dynamic on the court, since President Obama would be able to choose his replacement. Still, Justice Stevens, as the most senior judge on the court, commands a level of respect and authority over court procedures that a new justice would not easily be able to replace.

Though he has persistently denied the “rumor” that he’ll step down, Florida Sen. Mel Martinez might announce as early as Friday that he’ll leave office early, according to a number of sources in the state and nation’s capitals.

“It’s a deeply personal decision that he will expand on later today. He decided it’s time to move to another stage of his life,” said a source familiar with the situation.

Martinez, the first Hispanic chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2007 to 2008, announced last year that he would not run for re-election in 2010 and spent the first months of the 111th Congress as an obviously unhappy but fairly reliable Republican vote.

He nonetheless took a lot of heat from the GOP base for his pro-immigration reform views and for his support of Sonia Sotomayor, whom he defended from charges of “racism” and endorsed for confirmation very early on. Martinez simply never got much respect; when he announced that he’d vote for Sotomayor, Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post tweeted, “Duh.” Jim Geraghty, hearing that Martinez might have left the Senate because he was sick of his party and his colleagues, predicts that he’ll “catch hell” for that. But between this and the pressure that pushed Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.) over to the Democrats, it seems like the problem is less Martinez’s sensitivity and more the GOP base’s demand for ideological purity.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), presiding over the vote, announced at 3:14 pm, “On this vote, the yeas are 68 and the nays are 31. The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor of New York to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States is confirmed.”

All 59 Democrats present — Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), who is battling cancer, was absent — voted for confirmation, while nine Republicans crossed the aisle to support the nominee.

The vote places Sotomayor squarely between President George W. Bush’s two nominees. John Roberts received 78 Senate confirmation votes, while Samuel Alito received just 58.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) released a statement praising Sotomayor’s confirmation.

Throughout the Senate debate on this historic nomination, I have echoed the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: ‘Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ The confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor brings us closer to realizing the goal of a more perfect Union.

Here’s how the senator put it in a statement:

“I have long said that to be a Supreme Court justice, a person must meet three main criteria: personal integrity, professional competence, and a view of important issues that is within the mainstream of contemporary judicial thought. After personally meeting Judge Sotomayor, thoroughly analyzing her judicial record, and reviewing her nomination hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Judge Sotomayor unquestionably meets each of these criteria,” he said. “Thus, I am proud to support her nomination and will vote to confirm her as a justice to the United States Supreme Court.”

“I think the fact the NRA is scoring that vote is dumb,” McCaskill told CQ Politics. “I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t get everybody’s support.”

Still, it’s not completely clear if he’s warning conservatives or liberals.

In an op-ed in USA Today, he writes that “supporters of liberal judicial philosophy might find [Sotomayor's confirmation] a Pyrrhic victory,” adding that “during three days of careful questioning, Judge Sotomayor renounced the pillars of activist thinking.”

So liberals may be disappointed.

But they’re not the only ones, warns Sessions. “Pledging ‘fidelity to the law’ and practicing judicial restraint are different things,” he writes. “Which Sotomayor will we get?”

Sessions cites Sotomayor’s decisions in three cases that Republicans hammered her on during the confirmation hearings: a property rights case case that allowed the government to take property from one developer and give it to another; her Ricci decision rejecting white firefighters’ claims of race discrimination; and her decision this year finding that the Second Amendment does not provide a “fundamental right” enforceable against the states. Sessions says that “each was contrary to the Constitution.”

Those decisions, and not the statements at her confirmation hearing, show her true colors, he argues.

“I don’t believe that Judge Sotomayor has the deep-rooted convictions necessary to resist the siren call of judicial activism. She has evoked its mantra too often. As someone who cares deeply about our great heritage of law, I must withhold my consent.”

After a lengthy dissertation denouncing Democrats for blocking the confirmation of previous Republican nominees, McConnell said that despite his strong belief that the president is entitled to great deference in his choice of Supreme Court justice, the senator would not support this one.

“If empathy is the new standard, then the burden is on any nominee who is chosen on that basis to show a firm commitment to equal justice under the law,” he said. “If nominees aren’t even expected to apply equal justice, we can’t be expected simply to defer to the President — especially if that nominee, as a sitting judge, no less, has repeatedly doubted the ability to adhere to this core principle.”

He continued:

Looked at in this light, Judge Sotomayor’s record of written statements suggests an alarming lack of respect for the notion of equal justice, and therefore, in my view, an insufficient willingness to abide by the judicial oath. This is particularly important when considering someone for the Supreme Court since, if she were confirmed, there would be no higher court to deter or prevent her from injecting into the law the various disconcerting principles that recur throughout her public statements. And for that reason, I will oppose her nomination.

McConnell then went on to criticize Sotomayor’s judicial record, and repeated the mistaken view, expressed by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) at the nomination hearing last week, that the Supreme Court in the discrimination case of Ricci v. DeStefano had unanimously rejected the Second Circuit opinion that Judge Sotomayor had joined.

“I’m referring to the Ricci case, in which a majority of the justices on the Supreme Court rejected Judge Sotomayor’s decision and all of them agreed that her reading of the law was flawed,” he said. “Here was a case in which a group of firefighters who had studied hard and passed a written test for promotion were denied it because not enough minority firefighters had scored as well as they had.”

As I’ve explained before, and as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) ably pointed out at the hearing last week, the Supreme Court’s decision was 5-4, with four dissenters saying they would have affirmed the Second Circuit opinion.

McConnell’s full statement is here.

The full Senate vote on her nomination is expected to take place the following week.