Sotomayor's transcript excerpt continued from page 2
SCHUMER: Right. The only point I'm making here, if some are seeking to suggest that your empathy or sympathy overrules rule of law, this is a pretty good body of law to look at. A, it's a lot of cases, 850. B, one would think -- I'm not going to ask you to state it -- that you'll have sympathy for immigrants and immigration. And, third, there is some degree of flexibility here, as Judge Newman said, just because of the way the law is. And yet you are exactly in the middle of the Second Circuit.
If empathy were governing you, I don't think you would have ended up in that position, but I'll let everybody judge whether that's true. But the bottom line here, in the air crash case, in Washington, in Boykin (ph), in this whole mass of asylum cases, you probably had sympathy for many of the litigants, if not all of them, ruled against them.
The cases we've just discussed are just a sampling of your lengthy record, but they do an effective job of illustrating the fact that, in your courtroom, rule of law always triumphs. And would you agree? I mean, that seems to me, looking at your record. You know it much better than I do, that rule of law triumphing probably best characterizes your record as your 17 years as a judge.
SOTOMAYOR: I firmly believe in the fidelity to the law. In every case I approach, I start from that working proposition and apply the law to the facts before us.
SCHUMER: And has there ever been a case in which you ruled in favor of a litigant simply because you were sympathetic to their plight, even if rule of law might not have led you in that direction?
SOTOMAYOR: Never.
Source: LA Times Top of the Ticket