Sorry Everyone, Get ready to be oppressed on the highest judicial level!!

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The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court in a 68-31 vote.

In a rare step of assembling at their desks on the Senate floor for the historic occasion, senators voted to confirm Sotomayor as the 111th justice and just the third woman to serve on the high court.

Democrats praised the federal appeals court judge as a mainstream moderate while most Republicans voted against her, saying she'd bring personal bias and a liberal agenda to the bench.

On Thursday, nine Senate Republicans joined a unanimous Democratic caucus to confirm Sotomayor to the high court.

Sotomayor will be sworn in August 8 at the U.S. Supreme Court. Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., will first administer the Constitutional oath in a private ceremony in the Justices' conference room attended by members of Sotomayor's family. Roberts will then administer the judicial oath.

The 55-year-old judge will replace retiring Justice David Souter, a liberal named by a Republican president, and she is not expected to alter the court's ideological split.

The GOP has decried President Obama's call for "empathy" in a justice, painting Sotomayor as the embodiment of an inappropriate standard that would let a judge bring her personal whims and prejudices to the bench.

Her writings and speeches "reflect a belief not just that impartiality is not possible, but that it's not even worth the effort," said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the minority leader. "In Judge Sotomayor's court, groups that didn't make the cut of preferred groups often found that they ended up on the short end of the empathy standard."

But Sotomayor picked up more GOP support even as more than three-quarters of the Senate's 40 Republicans said they would vote "no" and contended she would bring liberal bias and personal sympathies to her decisions.

"Judge Sotomayor's decisions, while not always the decision I would render, are not outside the legal mainstream and do not indicate an obvious desire to legislate from the bench," Republican Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio said on the Senate floor Thursday.

"I have confidence that the parties who appear before her will encounter a judge who is committed to recognizing and suppressing any personal bias she may have to reach a decision that is dictated by the rule of law," he said.

Democrats, praising her as a well-qualified judge and a mainstream moderate, are warning Republicans that they risk a backlash from Hispanic voters -- a growing part of the electorate -- if they oppose her.

"Judge Sotomayor should not be chosen to serve on the court because of her Hispanic heritage, but those who oppose her for fear of her unique life experience do no justice to her or our nation. Their names will be listed in our nation's annals of elected officials one step behind America's historic march forward," said Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat.

Republicans bristled at the suggestion that they were not willing to confirm a qualified Hispanic, noting that Democrats used extraordinary measures several years ago to block the confirmation of GOP-nominated Miguel Estrada, a Honduran-born attorney, to a federal appeals court. GOP senators have said instead that their opposition to Sotomayor is based on her speeches and record, pointing to a few rulings in which they argue she showed disregard for gun rights, property rights and job discrimination claims by white employees. They also cited comments she's made about the role that a judge's background and perspective can play, especially a 2001 speech in which she said she hoped a "wise Latina" would usually make better decisions than a white man.

"I feel very badly that I have to vote negatively -- it's not what I wanted to do when this process started -- but I believe that I'm doing the honorable and right thing," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah prior to Thursday's vote.

Republicans have been particularly critical of Sotomayor's position on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. She was part of a panel that ruled this year that the amendment doesn't limit state actions -- only federal ones -- in keeping with previous Supreme Court precedent. But gun rights supporters said her court shouldn't have called the issue "settled law," and they criticized her for refusing during her confirmation hearings to go beyond what the high court has said and declare that the Second Amendment applies to the states.

The National Rifle Association has strongly opposing her and threatened to downgrade any senator who voted to confirm Sotomayor in its closely watched candidate ratings. The warning has made little impact on Democrats, many of whom have rallied behind the judge despite their perfect or near-perfect ratings from the NRA, but it may have influenced some Republicans who were initially considered possible supporters but have since announced their opposition, citing gun rights as a key reason.

Click here for more FOXNews.com coverage of Sonia Sotomayor.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08 ... tion-vote/