Executive Session

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, I thank my Republican colleague.

I begin by congratulating my colleague from Vermont, Senator Leahy, for the distinguished manner in which he has led these hearings.

I rise today in support of the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. As an assistant district attorney, a Federal district judge for the Southern District of New York, and a Federal circuit court judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has demonstrated her eminent qualifications, impartial jurisprudence, and a faithful interpretation of the U.S. Constitution, and this body has every reason to vote today in support of her nomination.

It is no secret that over the last 50 years, the Supreme Court has become a very conservative institution. We are long past the days when the Court respected and dutifully applied the full implications of the Bill of Rights and vigorously protected the freedoms provided us by the Founders of our country and the Framers of the Constitution. Recently, this rightwing drift has become worse, not better. The present Court has routinely favored corporate interests over the needs of working people and the interests of the wealthy and powerful against those of ordinary citizens.

My hope is that Judge Sotomayor will help bring balance to a Supreme Court that today is way out of balance and has moved very far to the right.

The Court recently gutted a key provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, allowing well-financed corporations to manipulate the legislative process under the guise of free speech--as if the Bill of Rights were written to grant giant corporations the same level of constitutional protection that it does flesh-and-blood American citizens. That is wrong, and that is unfortunate.

The Supreme Court recently made it easier for employers to avoid valid pay discrimination claims by their employees on procedural technicalities, a decision Congress had to rectify. And just this past term, the Court scaled back environmental protections, holding that the Clean Water Act permits a mining company to pump hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic wastewater per day into an Alaskan lake.

I sincerely hope and I have every confidence that Judge Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court will help curb this corporatist trend and put the Court back on the path of respecting the rights of individual Americans and the environmental and other laws passed by Congress. For that reason, I intend to vote for Judge Sotomayor as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

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