In the mid-1970s, Sonia Sotomayor—President Obama’s nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court—was a student at Princeton. Back then, when Sotomayor led a group called Acción Puertoricaño, she was an “outspoken activist” well-versed in the language of leftism and identity group grievance politics.

In a letter to the Daily Princetonian published 10 May 1974, she describes a complaint from “the Puerto Rican and Chicano students of Princeton”:

The facts of the complaint are these: 1) There is not one Puerto Rican or Chicano administrator or faculty member in the university; 2) There are two million Puerto Ricans in the United States and two and a half million more on the island itself. Yet there were only 66 Puerto Rican applicants this year, and only 31 Puerto Rican students on campus. While there are 12 million Chicanos in the United States, there were only 111 Chicano applicants and 27 students on campus this year; 3) Not one permanent course in this university now deals in any notable detail with the Puerto Rican or Chicano cultures.

Although she herself was a Puerto Rican student receiving a free ride on a full scholarship, Sotomayor concluded that a “lack of commitment on the part of the university to the Puerto Rican or Chicano heritage seems self-evident” and that it “reflect[s] the total absence of regard, concern and respect for an entire people and their culture.”

Hyperbole comes naturally to the college-aged, so I’m willing to believe that the Sotomayor of the Woodstock era is not the woman who sits on the court today because, as she might say, I would hope that an older Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a young Puerto Rican girl who hasn’t lived that life.

Legal blogger Tom Goldstein conducted a survey of her record on the court of appeals, where he says “Sotomayor has decided 96 race-related cases.” Sotomayor has been on the United States Court of Appeals since 1998, where she serves on panels of (typically) 3 judges that hear each case. Goldstein’s survey found:

Of the 96 cases, Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and agreed with the claim of discrimination 10 times; the remaining 8 involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 cases favoring claims of discrimination, 9 were unanimous.

If that’s true and is reflective of her record being better than her rhetoric, then that’s a bit of a relief. And although there is at least one highly-controversial racial discrimination decision in the record Goldstein cites, the fact is, Republicans don’t have the political juice to oppose her anyway. So, barring Obama withdrawing her for some reason or a new fact emerging that moves enough Democrats to vote against her, Sotomayor will be confirmed.

Nevertheless, her seeming inevitability doesn’t mean that Sotomayor should get a pass for her rhetoric or her fierce support of affirmative action and racial preferences in hiring. Her philosophy on racial preferences and “social justice” should be questioned thoroughly during her Senate confirmation hearings.

Since Sotomayor endorses the idea that a judge’s ethnic background affects judicial decision-making, shouldn’t we know how her heritage has influenced her thinking in cases she’s judged? Could she point to specific cases where “being a Latina woman” lead her to a “better” decision than a “white male” would have made?

I don’t expect the Democratic majority to ask these questions, so Republicans should. That is the minimal duty of an opposition party. We’ll see if they have the stomach to do it.