What she said then vs. what she says now

Thus far, the Sotomayor hearings appear to be one epic case of “what she said then vs. what she says now.”

The Politico explains one example from the hearings today:

Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) elicited an extremely broad statement from Sotomayor that foreign law should not have any impact on the result of American legal disputes.

?Foreign law cannot be used as a holding or a precedent or to bind or to influence the outcome of a legal decision interpreting the Constitution or American law that doesn?t direct you to that law,? Sotomayor said. Her comment seemed to go further than she did on Tuesday, where she said, ?American law does not permit the use of foreign law or international law to interpret the Constitution. That’s a given.?

Back in April, during a speech to the American Civil Liberties Union, Sotomayor said U.S. judges shouldn?t flinch about turning to foreign law when considering cases.

“[I]nternational law and foreign law will be very important in the discussion of how we think about the unsettled issues in our own legal system. It is my hope that judges everywhere will continue to do so because . . . within the American legal system we?re commanded to interpret our law in the best way we can, and that means looking to what other, anyone , has said to see if it has persuasive value,? she said. However, she also cautioned, ?American analytical principles do not permit us to use that law to decide our cases. But nothing in the American legal system stops us from considering the ideas that that law can give us.”

So, all nuisances of language aside, which position should we believe? When her current position differs from the position she appears to have held for years, which should we opt for?

Sotomayor has diverged from previous statements on other issues, too, such as the “wise Latina” comment, which she says didn’t mean what, at first blush, it appears to mean.