APP's Sotomayor Central rolls into day three of the Senate confirmation hearings of Judge Sotomayor with an article by Hadley Arkes on an exchange between her and Senator Diane Feinstein which Arkes found to be intriguing:

The response to Feinstein’s questions was more revealing or interesting than I had anticipated.

Sotomayor twice declined to take Feinstein’s bait, or her invitation, to attack Chief Justice Roberts and decisions he had helped to shape.   One was in response to the case on partial-birth abortion (Gonzales v. Carhart, 2007) and the case dealing with the standing of “tax payers” to litigate (Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation).  

In the Gonzales case, Feinstein notably omitted the point that the case involved that gruesome procedure of puncturing the skull of the child and sucking out the contents.  That procedure was performed without an anaesthetic for the victim of the killing.  But the presence of a victim and pain was screened out by Senator Feinstein:  she noted only that this case seemed to contradict a string of cases that affirmed “the health” of the pregnant woman as a cardinal point on these matters of abortion.  Feinstein seemed to suggest that this concern for the health of the woman should have been seen as the decisive or controlling concern. [Read on...]

Hadley Arkes is Edward N. Ney Professor in American Institutions (Political Science) at Amherst College and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.