Senate confirms Sotomayor for high court

WASHINGTON - Sonia Sotomayor won confirmation Thursday as the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court justice in a history-making Senate vote that capped a summer-long debate heavy with politics. According to NBC News, she will be sworn in on Saturday — Chief Justice John Roberts will administer both the constitutional and judicial oaths.

The Senate vote was 68-31 to confirm Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee.

The 55-year-old daughter of Puerto Rican parents was raised in a South Bronx housing project and educated in the Ivy League before rising to the highest legal echelons, spending the past 17 years as a federal judge.

A majority of Republicans lined up against her, arguing she'd bring personal bias and a liberal agenda to the bench. But Democrats praised Sotomayor as an extraordinarily qualified mainstream moderate and touted her elevation to the court as a milestone in the nation's journey toward greater equality and a reaffirmation of the American dream.

Obama, the nation's first black president, praised the Senate's vote as "breaking another barrier and moving us yet another step closer to a more perfect union."

Minutes before the vote, Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Senate's lone Hispanic Democrat, said, "History awaits, and so does an anxious Hispanic community in this country."

"When she places her hand on the Bible and takes the oath of office, the new portrait of the justices of the Supreme Court will clearly reflect who we are as a nation, what we stand for as a fair, just and hopeful people."

The Senate chamber was heavy with history as senators took the rare step of assembling at their desks on for the vote, rising from their seats to call out "aye" or "nay." The longest-serving senator, 91-year-old Robert Byrd of West Virginia who has been in frail health following a long hospitalization, was brought in in a wheelchair to vote in Sotomayor's favor. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., suffering from brain cancer, was the only senator absent.

Sotomayor replaces retiring Justice David Souter, a liberal named by a Republican president, and she is not expected to alter the court's ideological split.

Still, Republicans and Democrats were deeply at odds over confirming Sotomayor, and the battle over her nomination highlighted profound philosophical disagreements that will shape future fights over the court's makeup as Obama looks to another likely vacancy — perhaps more than one_ while he's in the White House.

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