Eight years before Sonia Sotomayor burst onto the national scene with her
hardscrabble life story and bid to become America's first Hispanic Supreme
Court justice, another judicial nominee almost made history. Honduran immigrant
Miguel Estrada was nominated in 2001 to become the first Hispanic on the D.C.
Circuit Court of Appeals, a post seen as a stepping stone to the Supreme Court.

Estrada's rags-to-riches story and sterling resume had the same star quality as
Sotomayor's. Estrada barely spoke English when he arrived in America at age 17,
but he wound up graduating with high honors from Columbia University and
Harvard Law School, editing the Harvard Law Review and clerking for Supreme
Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. After a stint at a prestigious New York law
firm, Estrada served as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York and an assistant
solicitor general in the Clinton administration. His bid for the federal bench
was backed by the left-leaning American Bar Association, which awarded him its
highest rating of "well-qualified."

Unlike Sotomayor, however, Estrada never enjoyed fawning press coverage or
effusive praise from the liberal activists and politicians who have spent the
past week pontificating about the need for ethnic diversity on our nation's
highest courts. In fact, many of the same voices gushing about the "empathy"
that Sotomayor's Hispanic heritage allows her to bring to bench once raged
against Estrada.

The key difference between Sotomayor and Estrada: Estrada is a conservative.
Senate Democrats, wary of seeing a Latino Republican nominee advance toward the
Supreme Court, spent more than two years blocking his nomination. Although he
had the votes to be confirmed, Estrada withdrew his name in 2003 after it
became clear that he would not be granted the courtesy of a simple up-or-down
vote on the Senate floor.

Estrada's case marked the first time a filibuster was used to defeat an appeals
court nominee. Yet the hard partisan line taken against Estrada by Senate
Democrats was hardly unprecedented.

Many of the same Democrats now extolling Sotomayor's underprivileged childhood
showed no appreciation for the humble beginnings of conservative judges
Clarence Thomas and Janice Rogers Brown, two African-Americans raised by
sharecroppers who faced fierce confirmation battles on their way to the bench.
And the same liberal activists who warned of a Catholic cabal on the Supreme
Court during the confirmation hearings of Justices John Roberts and Samuel
Alito have made nary a peep about Sotomayor's Catholicism, perhaps because they
regard her as the "right" kind of Catholic — one who does not actively practice
her faith.

President Barack Obama recently called on senators to judge Sotomayor "on the
merits" and eschew the "political silliness that has come to surround the
Supreme Court." That challenge would carry more weight had Obama himself met it
during his Senate tenure. When evaluating Roberts' nomination in 2005, Obama
acknowledged that "there is absolutely no doubt in my mind Judge Roberts is
qualified" but said he was more concerned about "what is in the judge's heart"
than his resume. Citing what he perceived as Roberts' lack of enthusiasm for
affirmative action and abortion rights, Obama rejected him.

Senate Democrats have not been shy about opposing qualified judicial nominees
who fail to toe the liberal party line, even when those nominees would bring
diversity to the bench. Yet many of those same Democrats now want to squelch
debate about Sotomayor's nomination by claiming that Republican criticism of
her amounts to racism and sexism.

Senate Republicans should ignore such claims and proceed with a respectful,
rigorous debate about this lifetime appointment to America's highest court.
Justice — and empathy for the millions of Americans who will be affected by the
votes of our next Supreme Court justice — demands no less.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is an author, television and radio host and St.
Louis-based fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Her website is
www.colleen-campbell.com.