Posted by
Defend America on Tuesday, July 14, 2009 7:37:07 PM
In regards to foreign law and the Constitution, as Andrew C. McCarthy points out, she contradicted herself:
Have a look at this passage from Collin Levy's excellent
WSJ op-ed today on "Sotomayor and International Law." He is quoting from a speech Judge Sotomayor gave to the ACLU of
Puerto Rico a few months back, in which she applauded resort to foreign
law in U.S. constitutional cases:
In Roper [v. Simmons], the
Court drew on international criticism of the death penalty to buttress
the argument that it should be prohibited for juveniles under the
Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. In Lawrence v. Texas,
the court overturned a Texas statute against sodomy on the grounds that
it violated due process. In his opinion for the majority, Justice
Anthony Kennedy cited the European Court of Human Rights to show that
the court's earlier decision in Bowers v. Hardwick was incorrect. In both those cases, Judge Sotomayor said, the court was using the foreign or international law to "help us understand what the concepts meant to other countries and . . . whether our understanding of our own constitutional rights fell into the mainstream of human thinking." [Emphasis added.]
Now this is what she said today answering Senator Schumer's questions:
American law does not permit the use of foreign law or international
law to interpret the Constitution. That's a given. And my speech
explained that, as you noted, explicitly. There is no debate on that
question; there's no issue about that question.
This from Ed Whelan at Bench Memo blog on National Review Online:
In regards to her position at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, she said that fundraising was the primary responsibility of the organization.
But, the NY Times described her position as:
[PRLDEF’s
litigation] efforts were backed by the defense fund’s board of
directors, an active and passionate group that included a young lawyer
named Sonia Sotomayor….
The board monitored all litigation undertaken by the fund’s lawyers, and a number of those lawyers said Ms.
Sotomayor was an involved and ardent supporter of their various legal efforts during her time with the group.…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/us/politics/29puerto.html?_r=1#34;may%2028=&_r=1&sq=hernandez%20sotomayor%20&st=cse&