WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the nation’s first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, concluding a 10-week battle with a resounding victory for the White House.
The largely party-line vote, 68 to 31, brought Judge Sotomayor, 55, to the threshold of one of the United States’ most prestigious institutions, completing an extraordinary narrative arc that began in a Bronx housing project where the Puerto Rican girl was raised by her widowed mother.
In brief remarks at the White House, President Obama hailed her confirmation as “breaking yet another barrier and moving us yet another step closer to a more perfect union.”
“With this historic vote,” he said, “the Senate has affirmed that Judge Sotomayor has the intellect, the temperament, the history, the integrity and the independence of mind to ably serve on our nation’s highest court.”
A White House spokesman said the judge watched the vote on television in her chambers in New York City, and she released no statement. But when Judge Sotomayor returned to her West Village home Thursday night, she beamed and waved at neighbors who lined the sidewalks to clap and shout encouragement.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is expected to swear the new justice in at a private ceremony at the Supreme Court on Saturday morning, a court spokeswoman said.
Leaders of conservative groups had tried to delay the confirmation vote, but Democrats pushed it through to ensure that Judge Sotomayor would be installed by September, when the court takes up a campaign-finance case left over from its last term. She is not expected to alter the balance of the court on most issues, as her views appear to be similar to those of David H. Souter, the retired justice she is succeeding.
Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation was never in much doubt, given Democrats’ numerical advantage in the Senate. But the final vote showed a partisan divide. No Democrat voted against her, while all but 9 of the chamber’s 40 Republicans did so. She will become the first justice nominated by a Democratic president to join the court since 1994.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, is ailing and did not vote. But the rest of the Senate filled the chamber beneath a packed gallery, solemnly rising one by one to cast a vote in the hushed room. Senator Robert C. Byrd, the 91-year-old Democrat of West Virginia who has also been ill, made a rare appearance in a wheelchair, raising his hand and murmuring his assent with a smile when a clerk called his name.
During three days of debate on the Senate floor, Republicans labeled Judge Sotomayor a judicial activist, criticizing several of her speeches about foreign law and judicial diversity — including a now-famous line lauding a “wise Latina” judge — as well as her votes in cases involving Second Amendment rights, property rights and a racial discrimination claim brought by white firefighters in New Haven.
“Judge Sotomayor is certainly a fine person with an impressive story and a distinguished background,” the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said this week. “But a judge must be able to check his or her personal or political agenda at the courtroom door and do justice evenhandedly, as the judicial oath requires. This is the most fundamental test. It is a test that Judge Sotomayor does not pass.”
Democrats portrayed Judge Sotomayor as a qualified judge whose biography — rising from humble beginnings to excel at two Ivy League universities, serve stints as a prosecutor and corporate lawyer, and then 17 years as a district and appeals court judge — is a classic American success story. Her judicial record, they said, is moderate and mainstream.
“Judge Sotomayor’s career and judicial record demonstrates that she has always followed the rule of law,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Thursday. “Attempts at distorting that record by suggesting that her ethnicity or heritage will be the driving force in her decisions as a justice of the Supreme Court are demeaning to women and all communities of color.”
Many political strategists warned Republicans that opposing the first Hispanic nominated to the Supreme Court would jeopardize the party in future elections, and some Democrats sought to portray Republican opposition as an insult to Hispanics.
In July, the National Rifle Association, which historically has stayed out of judicial nomination fights, came out against Justice Sotomayor and said it would include senators’ confirmation vote in its legislative scorecard on gun-rights issues for the 2010 election, a pointed threat to Democrats from conservative-leaning states.
But both efforts to appeal to interest-group politics largely faltered.
The vote was “a triumph of party unity over some of the interest-group politics that you would have expected to play a bigger role,” said Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative Committee for Justice.
Many Republicans took pains to emphasize that their vote against Judge Sotomayor did not mean they were anti-Hispanic.
Before announcing his opposition to her nomination, Senator John McCain of Arizona, last year’s Republican presidential nominee, first described her as an “immensely qualified candidate” with an “inspiring and compelling” life story. And he dwelled on his support for Miguel Estrada, an appeals-court nominee of President George W. Bush whom Democrats blocked from a vote even though “millions of Latinos would have taken great pride in his confirmation.”
Many Republicans echoed Mr. McCain’s approach, and some conservatives noted that Hispanics are ideologically diverse. But for some Hispanic voters, the symbolism of the first Hispanic joining the Supreme Court — and the memory of who opposed her — could be all that lingers, said Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza, an Hispanic advocacy group.
“This is a singularly definitive historic moment,” Ms. Murguía said. “So it is a vote, I think, that will matter to the Latino community and will be remembered by the Latino community.”
The vote could also have lingering consequences for Democratic senators from conservative-leaning states who confirmed Judge Sotomayor’s nomination despite the N.R.A.’s opposition.
Manuel A. Miranda, a conservative judicial issues advocate, said he believed that the threat of lower ratings by the N.R.A. had an impact by prompting more Republicans to vote against Judge Sotomayor.
Matthew Dowd, a former political adviser to Mr. Bush who had warned Republicans to be civil, disagreed. The Supreme Court confirmation process has simply become increasingly polarized along party lines, Mr. Dowd said.
“My view is that gun rights had nothing to do with it,” Mr. Dowd said. “Supreme Court nominations have become dodgeball games, with Democrats lining up on one side and Republicans lining up on our side.”
Colin Moynihan contributed reporting from New York.
