Legal experts' views on the Sotomayor hearing

Sonia Sotomayor deftly dodged conservative senators' efforts to pin her down on her "judicial philosophy" on issues like abortion and gun control Wednesday, leaving those on both sides of the issues frustrated, said legal experts following the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on her nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. But her restraint drew praise from some as evidence that she is a moderate judge who will decide cases on the facts, not preconceived opinions.

--

Ilya Shapiro

Senior fellow at the conservative-libertarian Cato Institute and editor of its Supreme Court Review

"I don't know if she assuaged anybody's fears on the big issues. She took a little bit of heat from pro-choice groups about where she stood in the abortion context, and several times the issue came up. . . . She began every answer with 'the court has said,' and went on with explanations of Supreme Court precedents, saying here is the state of the law. That is nonresponsive.

"The senators have a right to ask what your interpretation of the Constitution is, what your judicial philosophy is, how she understands questions about abortion rights and property rights. Again and again she talks about precedent in painstaking detail. Either she hasn't thought more deeply about her overall judicial philosophy and just kind of wings it, or she was being disingenuous. I'm not criticizing her about whether she has a wrong or right view of policy on abortion but about what is obfuscation at best and at worst a lack of intellectual edifice on constitutional interpretation.

"The larger issue I think everybody is concerned about with her 2nd Amendment case, Maloney [vs. Rice, in which New York banned a martial arts weapon], what has everybody concerned, is her description of nunchucks as very dangerous and therefore she had less of a problem banning or restricting them. If you applied that standard, that a government can act whenever an implement is dangerous -- all weapons are dangerous. That's no standard at all. There were some very worrying things there."

--

Kimberly West-Faulcon

Constitutional law professor at Loyola Law School

"What I think she has been consistent about is the notion of fidelity to the law. What she is demonstrating is that she takes a moderate approach to judging. Where she's been criticized, she's being criticized for showing judicial restraint. Sens. [Sheldon] Whitehouse [D-R.I.] and [Al] Franken [D-Minn.] made the observation that the use of the term 'judicial activism' has become code for judicial outcomes that somebody doesn't like. Sotomayor takes a moderate approach, as opposed to an activist one, in deciding what modern law is and applying that in her decisions.