Sotomayor will put the collective interest at the core of her decision-making

"Current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as twentieth-century Americans. ... [T]he genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs."

— Justice William Brennan, 1985

The U.S. Constitution is the bedrock of American values and laws, but as much as it espoused the transcendent goals of its framers, it also carried their biases. Those biases included thinking women shouldn't vote or hold office, African Americans were three-fifths of a human being and Native Americans not part of the political equation at all.

How dare the men of the Senate Judiciary Committee expect Sotomayor to trade her identity for a black robe when they wear their privileged identities as comfortably as their dark, expensive suits.

Like it or not, we are the sum of our experiences. Fidelity to a profession requires we check ourselves regularly to ensure objectivity, but Sotomayor shouldn't apologize for her heritage or the perspective it has afforded her.

I get that part of the confirmation process is to push nominees to the edge. Clarence Thomas vs. Anita Hill anyone? But Alabama Sen. Jeff Session's self-righteous line of questioning of Sotomayor was the epitome of hypocrisy.

The Republican lawmaker comes from a state with a long and ugly history of racial bias. He ought to be the last person slinging around the word "biased." Indeed, Sessions' own nomination for a federal judgeship by former President Ronald Reagan was killed over allegations that cast him as racially insensitive.

Sessions and his colleagues have short memories. If Sotomayor follows the law and her conscience, she'll be part of a long tradition on the court. It was the personal and the political compelling former Chief Justice Earl Warren to use Brown v. Board of Education and other cases to lead the court's 12-year charge against legalized racism. I came away from reading "The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court" gratified that justices have used the Constitution to transform American law on freedom of speech, privacy and other areas.

Sotomayor's critics ought to at least be honest. They don't mind an activist court; indeed they want one when it works to their benefit. Their fear is that Sotomayor will upset the delicate system propping up the privileged. Sotomayor's ruling in the white-firefighters case is cited by detractors as proof Sotomayor sympathizes with minorities.

This was all to be expected. After decades of civil-rights laws and actions benefiting women and minorities, a spate of "reverse racism" lawsuits in recent years unmask a zero-sum game. In order for some to win, some had to lose. It doesn't take a history major to know this was always the case but until some white men felt they were losing, it didn't matter.

All is not lost, says University of Washington political science professor Luis Fraga. The road forward is not a sudden ignorance of the needs of individual groups or our laws' impact on them, but a judicial temperament that keeps the collective interest at the core. This ought to ease conservative fears, since it is the same view espoused in the writings of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and Alexis de Tocqueville.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina showed up his fellow Republican colleagues on Monday when he assured Sotomayor that unless she had a complete meltdown, she was headed to the Supreme Court.

Good for Graham. But America is headed for a complete meltdown if some of his colleagues cannot shed their hypocrisy.

Lynne K. Varner's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times. Her e-mail address is lvarner@seattletimes.com