The Hearings Ritual

The Sonia Sotomayor hearings are following a form as rigid, predictable, and scripted as some elaborate court etiquette from Tokugawa Japan. The judge declares her fidelity to principles that nobody believes she holds. She denies holding principles that she has repeatedly and even eloquently avowed.

The Sonia Sotomayor hearings are following a form as rigid, predictable, and scripted as some elaborate court etiquette from Tokugawa Japan. The judge declares her fidelity to principles that nobody believes she holds. She denies holding principles that she has repeatedly and even eloquently avowed. She insists that her quoted words do not mean what they obviously do mean. The Senators on the Judiciary Committee pretend to believe her. One misstep - one unscripted moment of authentic truth - and the spell is broken. But so long as she sustains the pretense, she is invulnerable. The same ritual that requires her to lie equally forbids anyone to comment on the lie. The senators are left to express hope that the Sonia Sotomayor who showed up in the Judiciary Committee to repeat carefully coached words is the "real" Sonia Sotomayor and that the Sonia Sotomayor of the previous 17 years is some kind of imposter. Maybe. But I bet it's the imposter who will be showing up for work at the Supreme Court next October...