Senate political shift will influence nomination

WASHINGTON — Four years after members of the Senate Judiciary Committee last convened to consider a Supreme Court nomination, a strikingly different group of senators gathered Monday to evaluate Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

The changes on the powerful panel reflect a generational shift in the Senate and a political shift in the nation. Both will influence not only the fate of Sotomayor's nomination but the shape of the judiciary for years to come.

That's because the Judiciary Committee has the power to speed up — or bottle up — a president's picks for more than 850 lifetime appointments to the federal bench.

None is more significant than the one the panel members began considering this week.

"After the decision to go to war, the second biggest decision you can make as a senator is a Supreme Court justice," says Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del. "Sotomayor is going to be on the court long after most of us are gone — and I mean gone-gone. It's the one thing you do that you know is going to have long-term implications."

When Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito were up for confirmation in 2005, the Judiciary Committee was dominated by Republicans and freighted with seniority: Five of its members had been involved in the confirmations of almost every sitting member of the Supreme Court.

The committee that will hear from Sotomayor this week is the most lopsidedly Democratic since the one that considered Justice Thurgood Marshall's confirmation in 1967. Five of its members have never been through a Supreme Court confirmation hearing — unless you count a 1991 Saturday Night Live skit that featured newly-minted Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who was pretending to be a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Of the committee's 19 members, 13 hold law degrees; two have MBAs; one is a farmer; one is a doctor and one is a former mayor. Two are women.

Ten were in the Senate in 1998, when Sotomayor came up for confirmation to the job she currently holds, on the New York-based 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals: seven voted for her and three against.

Two familiar faces from past confirmation battles will be absent when Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., bangs the gavel to start the proceedings. Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat who gained a reputation for his tenacity and loquacity during 31 years on the committee, left the Senate in January to become vice president. And liberal icon Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., battling brain cancer, relinquished the seat he held for 45 years on Judiciary Committee to devote his energies to the effort to overhaul the nation's health insurance system.

Sen. Arlen Specter, who chaired the Roberts and Alito hearings as a Republican, now will have a seat at the far end of the Democratic side of the dais, just ahead of Franken. The veteran Pennsylvania lawmaker switched parties earlier this year.

One thing has not changed. "The committee has always been one of the most partisan on Capitol Hill," observes Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican whose 31-year tenure makes him the panel's longest serving member. Both parties pick their fiercest partisans for the panel, says Hatch, who enjoys the resulting debates. "They're all very, very good people — all very tough, smart people. You get the best cross currents."