President Obama has nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter and the confirmation process is underway. Under the Constitution, the Senate exercises its role of advice and consent as a check on the President's power to appoint. This division of authority requires the Senate to determine whether Judge Sotomayor is qualified, by experience and especially by judicial philosophy, to sit on the Supreme Court.

The Senate does not have a co-equal role in the appointment process, as Democrats insisted under a Republican President. Not surprisingly, none of them have made that argument since a President of their own party has taken office. Instead, the majority now prefers a much more, shall we say, streamlined process to handle President Obama's judicial nominees, including Judge Sotomayor.

There is plenty of time for a process that everyone can support, a process in which the American people can have confidence, a process that can meet the goal of having a Justice in place when the Supreme Court begins its next term in October. That is not the option the majority chose. Instead, the Senate is forced to examine the largest judicial record in a century for a Supreme Court nominee in the shortest time in modern memory.

The 48 days from announcement to hearing for this nominee is more than three weeks shorter, more than 30 percent, shorter than the process for considering the nomination of Justice Samuel Alito, who had a comparable judicial record. There is no reason to impose this truncated, abbreviated timetable except that the majority can do so. There is no reason to impose this divisive course without a bipartisan agreement. When Democrats were in the minority, they insisted that doing it right was more important than doing it fast. Winning an election appears to have reversed those priorities, but that is where we find ourselves.

In addition to the general requirement of experience and character that applies to all nominees, judicial nominees must have an appropriate judicial philosophy, a proper understanding of the power and role of judges in our system of government. This standard applies to Judge Sotomayor's entire record, including her speeches and articles, the activities and actions by organizations she has helped to lead, as well as thousands of judicial decisions in which she has participated and hundreds of judicial opinions that she has written. None of these items should be lifted out of context, twisted into something it is not, given undue weight, or ignored because it is controversial or politically inconvenient. But each is part of the record Judge Sotomayor brings to this nomination, and each should be considered for what it reveals about her qualifications generally and her judicial philosophy specifically.

Recently, Senator Jeff Sessions, the Ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, spoke about what America's founders envisioned for the judiciary as a part of the system of government they established. He accurately portrayed the modest and restrained role that unelected federal judges properly have in our system of self-government under a written Constitution.

In contrast, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, also a Judiciary Committee member, offered the contrasting view when he said that judges may see a need for change in the law or in our country and actually have authority to make that change through their decisions.

Judges have no such authority. Judges do not exist to change society, change the country, or change the law. That is the responsibility of the people and their elected representatives. Government by judges is the opposite of government by the people. The judicial branch is as much part of the government that must be limited for our liberty to thrive as is the legislative or executive branch.

It is critical to know whether Judge Sotomayor endorses the restrained view of judicial power outlined by Senator Sessions or the activist view outlined by Senator Durbin. This question is particularly important because President Obama has already taken sides in this debate. He has already said that he believes that judges may decide cases based on their personal views, concerns, and what is in their hearts. He has already said that he will choose judges who have empathy for certain groups and that such personal empathy is an essential ingredient for making judicial decisions.

Judge Sotomayor has also spoken about empathy and life experience. One of her statements in this regard has received significant media attention and an abundance of commentary and reaction. President Obama quickly suggested that this statement was an isolated phrase in an isolated speech, one that he was sure Judge Sotomayor would have restated.

But then we learned that Judge Sotomayor had said the same thing, indeed had given the same speech, several times over nearly a decade. President Obama then told us to focus not simply on this one statement but to look at the entire speech in which it appears. Doing what President Obama said, however, only identifies other statements that, quite frankly, are more in need of clarification and are potentially more controversial than the one receiving all of the attention so far.

Judge Sotomayor, for example, said that while judges transcending their personal sympathies and prejudices may be an aspiration, she questioned whether doing so is possible and even whether judges should make the attempt. That is a controversial idea. The very oath of judicial office that Judge Sotomayor has twice taken, and will take again if confirmed this time, says that judges will administer justice impartially. To most people, that makes transcending personal sympathies and prejudices not merely an aspiration, but a requirement. In fact, by more than three-to-one, Americans reject the notion that judges may go beyond the law as written and take their personal views and feelings into account.

In that same speech, Judge Sotomayor endorsed the view of a Harvard law professor that there is no objectivity or neutrality in judging, but merely a "series of perspectives." To many people, this sounds like the opposite of the rule of law. Judge Sotomayor made the identical statements in 1994, before she was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, and in 2002, after her appointment.

And in another speech, she said that while district judges do justice for the parties, appeals court judges do justice for society as a whole. We need to know what she means by that and what, on that trajectory of expanding judicial power, she sees as the power and role of the Supreme Court at the pinnacle of the judicial pyramid.

These are the kind of statements that relate directly to Judge Sotomayor's judicial philosophy and which need to be clarified and explained. The confirmation process, and the upcoming hearing, exist for that purpose. The Senate and the American people need to know what she means by these and other statements about the process judges should follow in deciding cases and the considerations and influences on which judges may base their decisions. We need to know her view of the role that things such as personal empathy play. The question, after all, is not whether she has empathy as a human being, but what she would do with empathy as a judge.

All of these, and more, are parts of Judge Sotomayor's large and complex record and I believe the Senate must examine all of it to determine whether she is qualified by experience, by character, and by judicial philosophy, to sit on the highest court in the land.