Republican Senators John Kyl and Jeff Sessions both held up Judge Richard Paez of the Ninth Circuit Court as aspiring to the kind of judicial impartiality they would respect in a jurist. However, Kate Klonick points out that both senators voted against Paez at the time, based on his "judicial activism".
Ranking minority member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) also held up Paez as the epitome of judicial impartiality in an impromptu press conference during a break this morning. The use of Paez is not a new meme for Republicans, but it certainly is a very strange ideal to hold Sotomayor to — especially since both Sessions and Kyl voted against Paez's confirmation.
Perhaps more amazing, Paez was no run of the mill nomination and confirmation. His nomination famously lasted a record 1,506 days when the confirmation was repeatedly delayed by Republicans who held the majority in Congress and cited his supposed “judicial activism.”
It's also worth pointing out that Paez's statement on bias, that a judge has to "Recognize that it exists, and determine whether you can control it so that you can judge the case fairly. Because if you cannot—if you cannot set aside those prejudices, biases and passions—then you should not sit on the case."
That's not really so different from the conclusion of Sotomayor's "Wise Latina" speech, in which she said that "I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires."
Paez probably didn't mean for these standards to be applied solely to Latino jurists.
-- A. Serwer
