In 2007, in “The International Judge” Sotomayor introduced the book with the following: “The question of how much we have to learn from foreign law and the international community when interpreting our Constitution,” she wrote, is “worth posing.”
Earlier this year, Sotomayor spoke to the Puerto Rican chapter of the ACLU. “International law and foreign law will be very important in the discussion of how to think about the unsettled issues in our own legal system,” she told the group.
Why are American judges ruling based on international law?
There is no need to consult foreign law when interpreting American constitutional law.
The Constitution is straightforward and admirably clear and simple when compared to international law and has served Americans well.
It is perhaps time to identify a trend in American law, based on foreign policies. Earlier this year Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg told a panel at Ohio State University that our Supreme Court ought to pay more attention to the laws and policies of other countries. “You will not be listened to if you don’t listen to others,” she warned.
It is highly likely that Saudi Arabia and China will approach the topic of terrorism much differently than Americans have in the post 9/11 period.
The Heritage Foundation's international law expert Steven Groves suggested several questions Sotomayor ought to be asked during her hearings.
-- Do you believe that it is the proper role of a justice of the Supreme Court to decide cases based on whether the decision will influence the jurisprudence of foreign courts? If so, how great a factor should the desire to influence foreign courts play in interpreting the Constitution?
-- By what criteria should foreign decisions be cited? Should the Court really be looking to adopt norms outside of the American tradition when deciding cases regarding controversial “values” issues such as the death penalty and homosexuality?
-- What exactly constitutes the mainstream of human thinking? Since much of American constitutional jurisprudence falls outside of the mainstream, why would we want to allow America’s less republican neighbors in the world community to influence the Court’s decisions?
Supreme Court justices take an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States. That is their task and they should adhere to it.
The hearing may be a sham and she is really already in while politicians use the hearings as a pulpit for their agenda but Senators should exact explanations and clarifications about her employment of foreign law--and Americans should heed her answers and judge her accordingly.
To quote Sotomayor accurately, in a 2001 speech to law students at the University of California at Berkeley (she said it was at Duke), she stated:
"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
This is how other countries run things, based on personal background, the U.S. should not imitate their example.
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