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Mr. WYDEN.  Mr. President, while this is my first opportunity to vote for a Supreme Court nominee named by a Democratic President, I don’t view the confirmation of judges through a partisan lens. Instead of partisanship, I have developed several criteria for assessing Supreme Court nominations. I believe these criteria are straightforward, and they are easy to understand:

   

Does the nominee have extensive experience with the law and a judicial temperament?

 

Has the nominee demonstrated sharp legal intelligence and sound judgment?

   

Does the individual display a judicial philosophy that falls within the mainstream of American legal thought?

 

Is he or she able and willing to separate their personal beliefs from their constitutional obligations?

 

On each count, I rule in favor of Judge Sotomayor.

 

Mr. President, my colleagues and I have all been listening carefully to Judge Sotomayor’s testimony, and we have reviewed her record. In that record, everything that I have been able to ascertain indicates that Justice Sotomayor will look a lot like Judge Sotomayor--an exemplary arbiter of the law, firm but practical, tough but fair.

 

For these reasons, I will cast my vote to confirm her as the next Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

 

Mr. President, I speak today from, perhaps, a unique position among United States Senators. I may be the shortest serving Senator in the history of our Senate Judiciary Committee. At the beginning of the 111th Congress, Senator Reid asked me to serve on this extraordinarily important committee. Senator Reid told me that it would be a temporary assignment, but I was still on the committee when Judge Sotomayor was nominated to the Supreme Court. I very much enjoyed my meeting with Judge Sotomayor, and I told her I wasn’t sure how long I would be serving on the committee. I said I felt a little bit like a snowflake with the prospect of an Oregon rain coming in the afternoon. In fact, the rain came just a few days before the Judiciary Committee began the confirmation hearing for Judge Sotomayor. I did get a chance to talk with her and discuss, at some length, her views with respect to the key issues surrounding how a Senator evaluates a nominee to the Supreme Court.

 

On the basis of that discussion and a review of her record, while I wasn’t able to cast a vote for her in committee, it is going to be, later this week, an honor for me to vote for her on the Senate floor.

 

When I met with Judge Sotomayor, we discussed a number of important issues--particularly matters relating to national security, the power of the Commander-in-Chief, and we also spent some time on a matter that I know the President of the Senate is most interested in and that is end-of-life health care. What struck me the most about Judge Sotomayor was her openness, her intellectual curiosity, and her desire to make sure she had all the facts, all the information, all of the views and background and the reading material that you have to have when you are going to make a call not on the basis of your predisposition but on the basis of the law and the law as it is applied to the facts.

 

In a number of areas we discussed with respect to end of life care, Judge Sotomayor acknowledged that these were issues she hadn’t personally considered. The President of the Senate and I have talked at some length about the politicized case of the late Terri Schiavo. I objected here on the floor of the Senate to the Senate considering that matter.

 

Of course, Judge Sotomayor could not go into how she would rule on end-of-life cases. But we talked at some length about those issues, and I am going to discuss them later in this statement tonight.

 

I do want to start my comments by saying I believe, with the young people at home in Oregon, this nomination by President Obama is regarded as an inspiration and a remarkable personal story. Oregonians have told me they look at her journey as the realization of the American dream. Oregonians have followed her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. They believe she is qualified for this job. They are very excited about the fact that this nomination makes history, and I commend the President for demonstrating with this nomination how it is possible to increase the diversity of talent and experience on the Supreme Court with one very capable individual.

 

Chairman Leahy and others have done an excellent job of going through the judge’s impressive background. I do want to spend some time talking about the two issues that Judge Sotomayor and I discussed in my office most extensively--Presidential power and end of life.

 

Serving on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I have followed the history with respect to the President’s Commander in Chief authority. Disagreements about this authority and how it is applied are certainly nothing new. There have been vigorous debates about this issue since our country was founded. But over the past several years, there has been especially heated debate around these questions and, in particular, the issue of whether, during times of war, the President has the authority to ignore laws passed by the United States Congress. As a result, there have been several occasions, over the past few years, where the Supreme Court has had to rule on major national security issues and address this question directly.

 

Our Court has frequently been sharply divided on this issue. At the same time, it has consistently ruled that--in Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s words--“a state of war is not a blank check for the President.” I believe this is a principle to be upheld.

 

When I raised these issues with Judge Sotomayor, I was impressed with her thoughtfulness, her knowledge, and the experience she discussed for dealing with these thorny issues. Her answers made me believe that, as a Supreme Court Justice, she would apply the Constitution in a way that struck a balance--a very careful balance--between protecting our collective security and protecting our individual liberty.

 

We have always had, in the national security area, something of a constitutional teeter-totter, where the Founding Fathers always sought to try to ensure that there was an appropriate balance between protecting our Nation and securing our individual liberties; and maintaining that balance is what the Founding Fathers saw as paramount.

 

While Judge Sotomayor certainly gave no inkling to me in our discussion about national security on how she might rule in a particular case, I felt very strongly that she would be able to define the reach of the Commander in Chief’s power so as to strike that appropriate balance between collective security and individual liberty.

 

I must say, I don’t want judges who will defer to any one President. I want judges who are going to defer to the law and respect the Constitution. I believe Judge Sotomayor will do that in her service on the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Mr. President, as I mentioned, I discussed with the judge the matter of end-of-life health care. This is a very sensitive issue for millions of Americans. What was striking about this in our discussions, when she and I met, is she recognized it was a contentious area of the law--one that deals with the rights of individuals and family members; and she certainly indicated she was going to spend a lot of time trying to learn about the history of cases in this area and the Court’s judgments on end-of-life care.

 

I have been very interested particularly in Justice Brandeis’s dissent in the Olmstead case. This was a 1928 case. The Supreme Court later adopted Justice Brandeis’s view in the Katz case which essentially made it clear there is a right to be left alone, a right to be respected in these very delicate questions.

 

What concerned me so much about the Terry Schiavo case--and again, Judge Sotomayor gave no inkling about how she would rule on an end-of-life case--I think she understood my concern, and would follow up on it, that we cannot have elected officials, and particularly the United States Senate, become something of a medical court of appeals where the United States Senate essentially appoints itself the arbiter of these very difficult tragedies.

 

Judge Sotomayor did not commit herself to any specific position on end-of-life issues or any of the other issues. And, in fact, the judge said that coming from New York where they have a very sophisticated set of laws and legal protections to empower the individual to make their own choices--not government--empower the individual to make these very difficult questions, the judge said because New York had those statutes empowering individuals that she would spend time looking at the laws and the decisions of the Supreme Court in this area, reflecting, again, her commitment to follow the facts, follow the law, and not bring any predisposition of one sort or another to a very difficult and contentious area of the law, one that, as sure as night follows the day, is going to be before the Supreme Court again--the matter of end-of-life health care.

 

Let me also mention one of our colleagues talked about her respect for precedent. I asked her about a woman’s right to choose. She said that is an area of the law that has been settled for decades.

 

On the second amendment, she indicated she would not try to eliminate the right to own guns for hunting or for personal protection, again, what amounts to a recognition of existing law.

 

On foreign law, she said she would not rely on international legal decisions to interpret the Constitution.

 

This is a nominee, Mr. President, who is going to be very sensitive to following precedent, following the facts, and ensuring that those principles are what guide her service on the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Before I close, I wish to introduce a letter the Senate Judiciary Committee has received in support of Judge Sotomayor from the Hispanic Bar Association. They passed a resolution in support of the judge’s nomination. The Senate Judiciary Committee has also received statements of support from the Hispanic National Bar Association, from the past presidents of NHBA.

 

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the letter and resolution and statement of support.

 

Mr. President, this organization, the Hispanic National Bar Association, is not for profit, a national membership association that represents the interests of more than 100,000 attorneys, judges, law professors, legal assistants, and law students of Hispanic descent in United States, its territories, and Puerto Rico.

 

After a review of her qualifications and overall record, the Hispanic National Bar Association’s Special Committee on the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that Judge Sotomayor is extraordinarily well qualified to serve on the Nation’s highest Court.

 

Let me close simply by saying that when we have to review a nominee for this extraordinarily important position, one of the most important measures for me is to know that the nominee’s views are squarely in the mainstream of American jurisprudence.

 

I came away believing that, but I hope that the Senate will not take my word for it or any other colleague’s word for it. I think we ought to reflect on what the American Bar Association said. They gave her their highest rating. Or listen to former FBI Director Louis Freeh who called her an “outstanding judge.” Or read the dozens of endorsements for her, including those from the American Hunters & Shooters Association, the Chamber of Commerce, and the National Association of Women Lawyers.

 

I started my statement tonight by laying out the criteria that I believe ought to be used in evaluating a Supreme Court nominee. In terms of those criteria, Judge Sotomayor is an individual who will bring great credit to the Supreme Court. She will be a role model for millions and millions of young people in our country. I hope our colleagues will vote in a resounding fashion in favor of her nomination to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Mr. President, I yield the floor.