During Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's 2009 confirmation hearing, Jeff Sessions as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee had the chance to air his biggest concerns about Sotomayor's nomination. He had several and spent much of his questioning of Sotomayor focused on racial issues, including her assertion during a speech that "a wise Latina woman" would hopefully reach a "better conclusion than a white male" more often than not. What a terrifying revelation that must have been for many GOP senators, including Sessions. But his best self really showed up when he was questioning a conservative opponent of Sotomayor's nomination and suggested that the real problem with it was the glut of Latino judges nationwide. Pema Levy writes:
The question went nowhere because the witness, conservative activist Linda Chavez, who urged senators to vote down Sotomayor's nomination, disputed Sessions' premise that having a large number of Latino judges was problematic.
Sessions: Ms. Chavez, I noticed one thing. According to the ABA statistics, only 3.5 percent of lawyers in America in 2000 were Hispanic, yet they—Hispanics make up 5 percent of the federal district court judges and 6 percent of circuit court judges. Would you comment on that?
Chavez: …I reject all of that. That doesn't bother me in the least that they are overrepresented. I think we should not be making ethnicity and race or gender a qualification for sitting on the bench or being a firefighter or being a captain or lieutenant on a firefighting team. I think we ought to take race, ethnicity, and gender out of the equation.
Heh. Sorry, Jeff, I'm not carrying your water on that precious piece of racism.
Also gotta love how Sessions is using the number of Latino lawyers in the nation as his measure of overrepresentation for Latino judges. In 2010, Latinos accounted for about 16 percent of the total U.S. population (up to more than 17 percent today), so they were totally underrepresented among judges and lawyers alike in terms of their percentage of the population. Still, Latinos making up 5 to 6 percent of judges was just too much for Sessions.