Sen. Arlen Specter, who just months ago was poised to lead the Republican opposition to President Obama's Supreme Court picks, is now, as a Democrat, making some of the most eloquent defenses of Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
Before asking the court nominee a question, the newly minted Pennsylvania Democrat scoffed at the notion the Sotomayor should not have made her infamous "wise-Latina" comments, which Sotomayor herself has since called ill-formed and poorly worded.
"There has been a lot of talk about a 'wise Latina woman' and I think this proceeding has tended to make a mountain out of a molehill," Specter said. "We have had a consistent line of people who are nominees who make references to their own backgrounds. We all have our perspective. Justice O'Connor talked about her life experiences. Justice Alito talked about his family suffering from ethnic slurs. Justice Thomas...talked about putting himself in the shoes of other people. And Justice Scalia talked about being in a racial minority. The expectation would be that a woman would want to say something to assert her competence in a country, which denied the women the right to vote for decades, where the glass ceiling limited people, where there is still disparagement of people on ethnic background. So I can see how someone would take pride in being a Latina woman and assert herself."
Specter also made light of the argument that Sotomayor -- and by extension Obama -- were stressing that judges should bring empathy on the bench.
"A lot has been made of the issue of empathy but that characteristic is not exactly out of place in judicial determinations," the senator said. "We have come a long way on the expansion of constitutional rights. Oliver Wendell Holmes [had a] famous statement that the life of the law is experience, not logic. "
Finally, Specter dismissed the idea that the judicial branch should be devoid of activism, arguing that the term was relative. Supreme Courts determine law all the time, he noted. "The Warren Court changed the constitution practically every day of which I saw being in the district attorney's office with changes of search and seizure, confessions, Miranda, right to counsel. Who could have thought it would take until 1963 to have the right to counsel?" Specter said.
In general, Specter's strong defense of Obama's court pick serves as a reminder of just the impact of Specter's party switch. It is quite a change since the days when he led the aggressive questioning of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings, in addition to opposing Robert Bork's nomination for the Court.