Sotomayor: \"It's not that it's important to the law as much as it is that it's what legal cases are about. People bring cases to courts because they believe that precedents don't clearly answer the fact situation that they're presenting in their individual case. ... If law was always clear, we wouldn't have judges. It's because there is indefiniteness not in what the law is, but its application to new facts that people sometimes feel it's unpredictable.\""; POL_Sotomayor_Quotes_Day_3[i++] = new Array("","Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md.","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); POL_Sotomayor_Quotes_Day_3[i-1].body = "\"I do want to first start with the judicial temperament issue and the reference to the almanac on the federal judiciary. I just really want to quote from other statements that were included in that almanac where they were commenting about you and saying that she is very good. She is bright. She's a good judge. She is very smart. She is frighteningly smart. She is intellectually tough. She is very intelligent. She has a very good, commonsense approach to the law. She looks at the practical issues. She is good.\"
Sotomayor: \"I think that most lawyers who participate in arguments before me know how engaged I become in their arguments in trying to understand them. And as I indicated yesterday, that can appear tough to some people, because active engagement can sometimes feel that way. But my style is to engage as much as I can so I can ensure myself that I understand what a party is intending to tell me.\" "; POL_Sotomayor_Quotes_Day_3[i++] = new Array("","Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); POL_Sotomayor_Quotes_Day_3[i-1].body = "\"You've been asked a lot of questions about abortion. And you've said that Roe v. Wade is settled law. Where are we today? What is the settled law in America about abortion?\"
Sotomayor: \"I can speak to what the court has set in its precedent. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court reaffirmed the core holding of Roe v. Wade that a woman has a constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy in certain circumstances. In Casey, the court announced that, in reviewing state regulations that may apply to that right that the court considers whether that regulation has an undue burden on the woman's constitutional right. That is my understanding of what the state of the law is.\""; POL_Sotomayor_Quotes_Day_3[i++] = new Array("","Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn.","","","","", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", ""); POL_Sotomayor_Quotes_Day_3[i-1].body = "\"Do you want to talk about any -- maybe a specific example of that in your own career as a prosecutor or what goes into your thinking on charging?\"
Sotomayor: \"I was influenced so greatly by a television show in igniting the passion that I had as being a prosecutor, and it was 'Perry Mason.' ... That TV character said something that motivated my choices in life and something that holds true ... defense attorneys serve a noble role, as well. All participants in this process do: judges, juries, prosecutors and defense attorneys. We are all implementing the protections of the Constitution.\""; // END editorial data