Sotomayor: the abstract justice?

July 21, 1:38 PMDC Gun Rights ExaminerMike Stollenwerk

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Sonya Sotomayor

In a previous column I defended supreme court nominee Sonya Sotomayor from attackers questioning her speeches puffing up the value of Latinas and other minorities as the equivalent of playing musical chairs with a practice long condoned in our society for obvious historical reasons. 

However, I noted that her Second Amendment jurisprudence is questionable by pointing out a problem with one the panel opinions she signed onto in which that court misused prior authority and failed to perform the required "rational basis" analysis required by the cited authority. 

Subsequently Sotomayor testified before the Senate in perhaps the most non-responsive manner ever seen of a Supreme Court nominee.  The Wall Street Journal zeroed in on Sotomayor's particularly non-responsive answers to Second Amendment questions in their editorial "Second Amendment Confidential" as essentially the response from the tired joke:  "Who's on first?"

Pointedly, when Sotomayor was asked by Senator Coburn (R-Oklahoma) what she thought about "the right to self-defense," Sotomayor told the Oklahoma senator that she didn't know if "that legal question has been ever presented" and called it an "abstract question."

Contrast Sotomayor's response above to Chief Justice John Roberts' forthright "look 'em in the eye and answer the question" approach during his nomination hearing.  When asked if there is a "right to privacy," he replied directly:  Of course there is, it's "the right to be left alone." 

Sotomayor will almost surely be confirmed.  But America's gun owners will have to wait and see what the abstract justice will do on the bench.