Senate Republicans are whipping themselves into a fighting mode over Judge Sotomayor, Mr. Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. Although the argument revolves around how she may interpret the Constitution, the reality is a struggle for power – for that is, after all, where political parties make their bones.

Even so, unlike some earlier nomination fights, this time the caterwauling is mostly pro forma. Not only is she eminently qualified, but also she has the votes. Also, her enemies must attack the high ground of sexism and racism that Mr. Obama chose for the fight. Republicans can ill afford to alienate a Latina.

However, since the issue will command gallons of ink and balloons of TV hot air, Lucius Flatley’s coffee shop group found time to address the issue this week.

There are two broad approaches to the interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. While lawyers complicate the issue (as lawyers are paid to do) by using such recondite terms as “constructionist,” “originalist” and “textualist” on the one hand, and “pragmatist,” “living Constitution” or “creation of law” on the other, the Flatley seminar agreed that the simple categories of “conservative” and “liberal” would do for their discussions.

A conservative, who drank hot cocoa, argued that liberal justices substitute their own value judgments for value judgments held by the Constitution framers. But a liberal said that that those old guys had different values than we do today. The framers, he said, considered law to be a standard set by political superiors for political inferiors. Among their “superior” values: the right to vote rested on property, slavery was taken for granted, states were assumed to be empires unto themselves, women were considered weak creatures unable to handle the responsibilities of citizenship, and public whipping and hanging were accepted forms of punishment.

He added, “Not only values, but the meaning of words themselves change. The term ‘gay’ would have been a compliment to those gentlemen in knee britches, but today it might result in either a black eye or a lawsuit.”

But the conservative was not defeated. He said that something may be “fair and just” only within the concept of the decider – and for the court to indulge in “feel-good” rulings would enfeeble the entire structure of law. The cocoa drinker retorted that we could not separate the law from morality. He noted that Nazi law was established under German legal procedure, but that the murder of Jews was a moral question that should have disqualified such a law.

Professor Flatley informed the seminar that few Americans realize that the Constitution says nothing about the court having the authority to disallow congressional acts. That power of “judicial review” was established by a clever, lawyer-like decision of the very first chief justice two centuries ago – a decision that, for political reasons, was not seriously challenged at the time. Habit and custom allowed that decision to eventually become fixed in concrete.

Such circumstance is not unique. Hell and the devil were not in the Bible. They were invented for the Roman Catholic Church by two German scholars who wrote the book that described such a place, and which became the “legal” basis for the inquisition. Today, legions of fundamentalist preachers (who detest the Roman Catholic Church) fulminate about that self-created place and its tortures.

The group concluded that constitutional interpretation is really a philosophical outlook. In the final analysis, it is the product of an individual’s mind, education, nature, culture and background. One justice may view Hamilton as the spiritual father of our country, while another may adopt Jefferson. The argument over Ms. Sotomayor’s nomination is, therefore, is very much a political issue. Who is going to benefit? Female or male? Old or young? The handsome or the ugly? The tall or the short? The weak or the strong? The rich or the poor?

Republicans or Democrats?

Rodney Quinn, who lives in Gorham, is a former Maine secretary of state. He can be reached at [email protected].