Looking at the politics, Mark Halperin thinks Senate Republicans will fall in line and ultimately allow Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be confirmed to fill the pending vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.
"By both design and luck, Obama faces a Supreme Court-pick process that has been drained of the tension and combat that has characterized such moments in the past several decades... Most Republicans will squelch their first instinct to go to the mattresses and instead follow the President's pathway: avoid a fight."
Of the current Republican senators who voted on her nomination to the appellate court in 1998, eleven voted against while seven voted in favor.
Interestingly, on the always controversial issue of abortion, David Brody notes that in 2002, Sotomayor wrote an opinion against a pro-choice group.