WSJ on the 'Empathy' Nominee

Is Sonia Sotomayor judicially superior to 'a white male'? The Wall Street Journal wants to know and somebody in the U.S. Senate should ask that question when Sonia Sotomayor appears for her confirmation hearings.

From a WSJ editorial:

In making Sonia Sotomayor his first nominee for the Supreme Court yesterday, President Obama appears to have found the ideal match for his view that personal experience and cultural identity are the better part of judicial wisdom.

This isn't a jurisprudence that the Founders would recognize, but it is the creative view that has dominated the law schools since the 1970s and from which both the President and Judge Sotomayor emerged. In the President's now-famous word, judging should be shaped by "empathy" as much or more than by reason. In this sense, Judge Sotomayor would be a thoroughly modern Justice, one for whom the law is a voyage of personal identity.

With Democrats holding 59 seats in the Senate, Sotomayor's confirmation is a forgone conclusion, but Republicans should use the hearings as an opportunity to expose the judicial activism of the far left.

From the editorial:

"Republicans can use the process as a teaching moment, not to tear down Ms. Sotomayor on personal issues the way the left tried with Justices Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, but to educate Americans about the proper role of the judiciary and to explore whether Judge Sotomayor's Constitutional principles are as free-form as they seem from her record."

Read the full editorial at the newspaper's Web site.