When President Obama introduced his Supreme Court nominee Tuesday, he spoke at length about her personal story. Sonya Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic justice. She has a long record as a lawyer and judge.
"I chose to be a lawyer, and ultimately a judge, because I find endless challenge in the complexities of the law. I firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all of our basic rights," she said Tuesday after Obama's announcement at the White House.
The "rule of law" is a phrase that most Americans can agree on. But any one nominee's interpretation of that phrase can provoke long arguments.
For two views of Sotomayor's long judicial record, we talk with Ed Whelan, the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who worked in President Bush's justice department and writes about legal issues for National Review; and Kenji Yoshino, a professor of constitutional law at New York University Law School, who also taught at Yale Law School and has known Sotomayor for several years.
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