Sotomayor denies bias in 'wise Latina' remark

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor stoutly denied racial bias Tuesday at her Senate confirmation hearing and said an oft-criticized remark about her Hispanic heritage affecting judicial decisions was a rhetorical device gone awry.

An attempted play on words "fell flat" in a speech in 2001, Sotomayor told Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., referring to remarks in which she suggested that a "wise Latina woman" would usually reach a better conclusion than a white male.

"It was bad because it left an impression that I believed that life experiences commanded a result in a case, but that's clearly not what I do as a judge," Sotomayor said.

Sessions, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, sounded unconvinced.

"As a judge who has taken this oath, I am very troubled that you would repeatedly over a decade or more make statements" like the one in 2001, he said.

Republicans questioned Sotomayor closely, sometimes challenging her answers, on the second day of hearings. However, Democrats command a strong majority in the Senate as well as on the committee, and there appeared little or no doubt about her eventual confirmation as the first Hispanic to sit on the high court.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the committee chairman, told reporters Sotomayor would be confirmed and added, "I'm convinced it will not be a party-line vote."

During the questioning, Sotomayor leaned into the table in front of her and spoke deliberately. She used her hands to reinforce her words, raising and lowering them to the table with palms flat and fingers extended. She scribbled notes to herself as senators spoke and bobbed her head to underscore her statements in reply.

On an issue faced by all high court nominees, Sotomayor said the Constitution contains a right to privacy, a forerunner of the right to abortion that the high court first outlined in its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

Questioned by Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., she said the right to abortion is "the Supreme Court's settled interpretation of what the core holding is," as affirmed in a separate 1992 ruling.

The issue of abortion rights has been central to Supreme Court confirmation fights for two decades or more, and with her statement Sotomayor came close to saying the issue was settled law but stopped short of that flat declaration.

Moments later, in response to a question by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, she said, "All precedents of the Supreme Court I consider settled law subject to" a great deal of deference but not absolute.