Passing Judgment: From the time President Barack Obama introduced Sonia Sotomayor as his U.S. Supreme Court nominee to the day of her confi rmation as an associate justice, conservative criticism of her nomination remained vocal and unrelenting.
While some conservatives focused on Sotomayor’s positions on gun rights and abortion, many seemed fixated with her comments regarding race and ethnicity. Their opposition, which continued up to the moment of the 68-31 Senate vote last month, appeared to be based on the notion that her ethnic background precluded her from judicial objectivity.
This might have been a typical conservative outcry to a left-of-center court nominee, but many scholars say the fi ght over Sotomayor is indicative of a larger struggle over the politics of identity. They say the Sotomayor nomination, on the heels of the election of the country’s first Black president, appears to be an attempt by White conservatives to control the discourse on race and ethnicity.
