From The Washington Post
By E.J. Dionne Jr.

This week’s hearings on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court represent the opening skirmish in a long-term struggle to challenge the escalating activism of an increasingly conservative judiciary.

The Senate’s Republican minority does not expect to derail Sotomayor, who would be the first Hispanic and only the third woman to serve on the court, and they realize that their attack lines against her have failed to ignite public attention, or even much interest.

Her restrained record as a lower-court judge has made it impossible to cast her credibly as a liberal judicial activist. “They haven’t laid a glove on her,” said Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), her leading Senate supporter.

Yet none of this diminishes the importance of the Senate drama that opens today, because the argument that began 40 years ago over the political and philosophical direction of the judiciary has reached a critical moment. Under Chief Justice John Roberts, conservatives have finally established a majority on the court that is beginning to work its will.

Republican senators know that Sotomayor’s accession to the high court will not change this, since she is replacing Justice David Souter, a member of the court’s liberal minority. But they want to use the hearings to paint the moderately liberal Sotomayor as, at best, the outer limit of what is acceptable on the bench to justify the new conservative activism that is about to become the rule.

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