Obama Supreme Court pick on track for quick vote

By Andrew Quinn

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, appeared headed for confirmation as the first Hispanic justice on the U.S. Supreme Court after Senate hearings ended on Thursday with Republicans promising a speedy vote.

But Sotomayor's conservative critics used the last day of her hearing to make a final dramatic point on her record on race issues, hearing testimony from two firefighters who said she ruled to deny them promotions because they were not black.

Through four days before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sotomayor has calmly parried Republican attempts to depict her as unfit for a lifetime appointment to the United States' top court and rife with liberal bias.

"I can't think of any greater service that I can give to the country than to be given the privilege of becoming a justice of the Supreme Court," Sotomayor said.

The committee chairman Senator Patrick Leahy said she would likely be approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate in coming weeks and take her seat when the nine-member court meets at a special session in September.

Ranking Republican Senator Jeff Sessions said his party would not seek to block a confirmation vote expected by early August before Congress goes on break. "I look forward to you getting that vote," Sessions said.

Republicans have repeatedly voiced fears the 55-year-old appeals court judge -- raised in the Bronx borough of New York and educated at Princeton and Yale --- is a "judicial activist" eager to imprint the high court with Obama's liberal agenda.

But by Thursday some appeared to be on the fence, with one senior Republican conceding her legal record was mainstream.

"I think and believe you are broad minded enough to understand that America is bigger than the Bronx," said Republican Senator Lindsey Graham -- although he did not say for sure if she had won his vote.

RACE CASES

Critics have focused on Sotomayor's attitudes toward race, with Republicans spotlighting comments in which she said a "wise Latina" might be a better judge than a white man.

She has also come under fire for upholding a lower court ruling that permitted the city of New Haven, Connecticut, to junk firefighter exam results that did not produce enough qualified black candidates.

A mostly white group of firefighters who scored well on the test complained they were discriminated against, and the Supreme Court later overturned Sotomayor's ruling, saying it could open the door to new racial quota systems.

Sotomayor had left the Senate hearing room by the time Republicans called one of their star witnesses against her: Frank Ricci, the chief plaintiff in the New Haven case.

"The rules of the game were set up and we have the right to be judged fairly ... not by the color of your skin," he said in the afternoon session of outwide witnesses