Sotomayor avoids specifics on hot issues

Like others before her, she is mum on abortion, guns.

By Julie Hirschfeld Davis

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor yesterday determinedly sidestepped questions on abortion and gun rights, keeping her opinions on those hot-button issues mostly private as she neared the end of her grilling in the Senate.

After two days of questioning by Judiciary Committee members, Sotomayor had yet to make any apparent slip, let alone have a "meltdown," which one Republican senator had said would be necessary to stop her from gaining confirmation as the first Hispanic and third woman to serve on the high court.

She is due back for more questioning today.

The appeals court judge, 55, yesterday avoided weighing in on any issue that could come before her as a justice, instead using legal doctrine and even humor to ward off efforts to pin her down.

She defused one tense exchange, on gun rights, by jokingly laying out a scenario in which she planned to shoot a GOP critic. She charmed a Democratic backer with nostalgia for fictional lawyer Perry Mason.

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Judiciary panel, expressed frustration at being unable to pin her down, complaining she was "backtracking on issue after issue" and lacking "clarity and consistency in her answers."

Democrats noted that Sotomayor was hardly less forthcoming than recent Republican nominees, including John G. Roberts Jr.

"I think I should stay away from discussions of particular issues that are likely to come before the court again," Roberts, now chief justice, said during his 2005 confirmation hearing. Sotomayor has responded similarly.

Her rulings as a federal judge for 17 years shed little light on her views on the social issues senators probed her on, but her record suggests to many she is unlikely to disturb the liberal-conservative balance on the court in replacing the generally liberal Justice David H. Souter.

As an appellate judge, Sotomayor has not had to rule on any case squarely confronting abortion rights.

In one case, she dismissed a challenge to the so-called global gag rule on U.S. foreign aid, deciding against an abortion-rights group. But in her opinion she used the phrases anti-abortion and pro-choice, typically used by abortion-rights supporters.

Sen. John Cornyn (R., Texas) said the White House reportedly offered vague assurances to abortion-rights groups in May that she would be sympathetic to their views. How would it know that, he wondered.

"I was asked no question by anyone, including the president, about my views on any specific legal issue," she said.

Sotomayor declined repeatedly to respond to questions designed to elicit her personal or legal views about a woman's right to end a pregnancy. She said she couldn't address the question in the abstract and wouldn't do so in any specific way because the issue is likely to come before the court.

The Supreme Court in 1992 "reaffirmed the core holding of Roe v. Wade that a woman has a constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy in certain cases," she told Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), adding that the ruling said the court should consider whether any state regulation "has an undue burden on the woman's constitutional right."

But she refused to be drawn out by Coburn, a leading abortion-rights foe, on whether a late-term abortion would be appropriate, or whether technological advances that allow an early-term fetus to survive should have any bearing on the legal standard for ending a pregnancy.

She was no more forthcoming when pressed by an abortion-rights supporter, Sen. Arlen Specter (D., Pa.).

Asked whether the 1992 ruling reaffirming Roe was a kind of "super" precedent, she did not respond directly.

Asked by Coburn whether the Second Amendment conferred a right to personal self-defense, Sotomayor posed a scenario in which the senator threatened her with bodily harm and she went home to get a gun and shoot him.

"I don't want to suggest I am, by the way," Sotomayor said, to laughter from the audience and Coburn.

Coburn responded with his own jibe: "You'll have lots of 'splainin' to do." His remark echoed a refrain from a 1950s situation comedy, I Love Lucy, in which the main character's Cuban-born husband, Ricky Ricardo, would often say with exasperation, "Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do."

She also shared a chuckle with Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.), a former professional comedian, about their mutual love of the TV series Perry Mason. Asked by Franken at the close of his questioning which was the lone case the prosecutor Hamilton Burger won during the show's run, Sotomayor was at a loss.

"Didn't the White House prepare you for that?" he asked with mock incredulity.

The hearings are to continue today with more questions for Sotomayor and testimony from witnesses.

One of them will be Frank Ricci, a white New Haven, Conn., firefighter, sitting in the audience yesterday, whose reverse-discrimination claim was rejected by Sotomayor's appellate panel.

The Supreme Court overturned that ruling late last month, and Republicans plan to showcase Ricci today as part of their effort to portray her as a judge who has let her biases trump the law.