Sonia Sotomayor: Supreme Empathizer?

[Fraulein Hilda]

Any idea how many Latinas went to law school at all, much less Yale, in 1976 when Sotomayer did? Must have been cause back then Latinas didn't know how to study...or maybe they were just dumber or something.

what does that have to do with anything we are discussing....oh wait, it doesn't, it is nik being emotionally illogical and as such it is causing nik to go off the deep end and create arguments out of thin air that have nothing to do with the topic at hand

how does that give her the ability to reach a better decision. stop making shit up and address the point.

So you think someone with a wider arrange of experiences won't reach better decisions? Really?

How does one who is so narrowly defined as a Latina woman have a wider array of experiences?

 

[Nik]

What are her experiences as a Latina which uniquely qualify her for SCOTUS justice?

"I, [NAME], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [TITLE] under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."

They don't "uniquely" qualify her. They are just experiences that are good for a justice to have. The things that qualify her are the whole Yale/Princeton/Summa cum laude/2nd circuit thing.

 

[Nik]

Because the US Constitution is racist and sexist?

Great avatar, elvis!

Swing and a miss. The Constitution speaks to racism, and outlaws it in certain contexts. Having experienced it makes one better able to recognize it.

What crap. It makes one better able to seek repartations for it, you mean.

No, thats not what I mean. But nice try. Lots of people thought separate but equal wasn't discrimination. Well, lots of white people thought that, anyway.

 

[Nik]

what does that have to do with anything we are discussing....oh wait, it doesn't, it is nik being emotionally illogical and as such it is causing nik to go off the deep end and create arguments out of thin air that have nothing to do with the topic at hand

how does that give her the ability to reach a better decision. stop making shit up and address the point.

So you think someone with a wider arrange of experiences won't reach better decisions? Really?

How does one who is so narrowly defined as a Latina woman have a wider array of experiences?

How many Latina women went to Yale in 1976?

 

[Fraulein Hilda]

So you think someone with a wider arrange of experiences won't reach better decisions? Really?

How does one who is so narrowly defined as a Latina woman have a wider array of experiences?

How many Latina women went to Yale in 1976?

As many as applied and qualified.

 

[Nik]

How does one who is so narrowly defined as a Latina woman have a wider array of experiences?

How many Latina women went to Yale in 1976?

As many as applied and qualified.

And why didn't as many apply and qualify as white men?

 

[Fraulein Hilda]

Swing and a miss. The Constitution speaks to racism, and outlaws it in certain contexts. Having experienced it makes one better able to recognize it.

What crap. It makes one better able to seek repartations for it, you mean.

No, thats not what I mean. But nice try. Lots of people thought separate but equal wasn't discrimination. Well, lots of white people thought that, anyway.

Bullshit logic. Wrongs that were righted long ago are not a necessary and sufficient condition for jurists to make policy as they see fit just because they disagree with it.

 

[Fraulein Hilda]

How many Latina women went to Yale in 1976?

As many as applied and qualified.

And why didn't as many apply and qualify as white men?

It doesn't matter. Result can't be backward engineered to infer cause.

 

[Nik]

What crap. It makes one better able to seek repartations for it, you mean.

No, thats not what I mean. But nice try. Lots of people thought separate but equal wasn't discrimination. Well, lots of white people thought that, anyway.

Bullshit logic. Wrongs that were righted long ago are not a necessary and sufficient condition for jurists to make policy as they see fit just because they disagree with it.

Comprehension fail. Lots of white people thought separate but equal wasn't discriminatory. Somehow I don't think any people who experienced the worse end of separate but equal thought that. Sometimes you need to experience discrimination to realize that its discrimination.

Not a necessary AND a sufficient condition?

 

[Nik]

As many as applied and qualified.

And why didn't as many apply and qualify as white men?

It doesn't matter. Result can't be backward engineered to infer cause.

Yes, they can actually. There are entire fields built around that. Evolutionary psychology for one.

 

[Fraulein Hilda]

Oh, good, the politically correct Bell Shaped Curve.

So tell me, separate but equal lasted 50 years, and it has been gone for the last 50 years. What is the next "separate but equal" that only people like Sonia Sotomayor are capable of seeing and ending?

And, on that subject, what skin color were the justices that ended "separate but equal?"

 

[Nik]

Oh, good, the politically correct Bell Shaped Curve.

So tell me, separate but equal lasted 50 years, and it has been gone for the last 50 years. What is the next "separate but equal" that only people like Sonia Sotomayor are capable of seeing and ending?

And, on that subject, what skin color were the justices that ended "separate but equal?"

Who said only people like Soyomayor are capable of seeing it?

The judges who ended it were white. They had the dreaded and all-evil empathy. And Separate but equal was clearly unequal, despite the fact that many people couldn't see it. There are more subtle forms of racism today.

 

[Fraulein Hilda]

Which only racists like Sonia Sotomayor and Barack Obama can see?

 

[Nik]

Actually this explains what I wanted to say rather well....

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.

However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.

I also hope that by raising the question today of what difference having more Latinos and Latinas on the bench will make will start your own evaluation. For people of color and women lawyers, what does and should being an ethnic minority mean in your lawyering? For men lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach. For all of us, how do change the facts that in every task force study of gender and race bias in the courts, women and people of color, lawyers and judges alike, report in significantly higher percentages than white men that their gender and race has shaped their careers, from hiring, retention to promotion and that a statistically significant number of women and minority lawyers and judges, both alike, have experienced bias in the courtroom?

Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.

 

[Nik]

Which only racists like Sonia Sotomayor and Barack Obama can see?

Oy, now your going to try for guilt by association?

 

[Fraulein Hilda]

Comparaed to what?

Asserting that they must understand racism simply because they belong to a certain race/ethnicity.

Sotamayor graduated from Yale, Obama from Harvard. Do you think they experienced authentic racism?

Hell, appoint Willie Horton the SCOTUS.

 

[Nik]

Comparaed to what?

Asserting that they must understand racism simply because they belong to a certain race/ethnicity.

Sotamayor graduated from Yale, Obama from Harvard. Do you think they experienced authentic racism?

Hell, appoint Willie Horton the SCOTUS.

Sotoymayor grew up in the Bronx housing projects in the 60's and 70's. Yeah, she experienced authentic racism.

And, again, nobody said MUST. Get that through your head.

 

[Fraulein Hilda]

Comparaed to what?

Asserting that they must understand racism simply because they belong to a certain race/ethnicity.

Sotamayor graduated from Yale, Obama from Harvard. Do you think they experienced authentic racism?

Hell, appoint Willie Horton the SCOTUS.

Sotoymayor grew up in the Bronx housing projects in the 60's and 70's. Yeah, she experienced authentic racism.

And, again, nobody said MUST. Get that through your head.

Ah yes, public housing projects. The liberal gold standard for empathy.

You knew how to put things right for the disenfranchised then, and you still know how now.

 

[Yurt]

Comparaed to what?

Asserting that they must understand racism simply because they belong to a certain race/ethnicity.

Sotamayor graduated from Yale, Obama from Harvard. Do you think they experienced authentic racism?

Hell, appoint Willie Horton the SCOTUS.

Sotoymayor grew up in the Bronx housing projects in the 60's and 70's. Yeah, she experienced authentic racism.

And, again, nobody said MUST. Get that through your head.

lmao....as if there is non authentic racism

 

[Nik]

Comparaed to what?

Asserting that they must understand racism simply because they belong to a certain race/ethnicity.

Sotamayor graduated from Yale, Obama from Harvard. Do you think they experienced authentic racism?

Hell, appoint Willie Horton the SCOTUS.

Sotoymayor grew up in the Bronx housing projects in the 60's and 70's. Yeah, she experienced authentic racism.

And, again, nobody said MUST. Get that through your head.

lmao....as if there is non authentic racism

I find it curious that you had no objection to the term when Fraulen used it...but when I parroted her term, merely to be as on point as possible, you felt the need to object. Why would that be, oh fair and impartial Yurt?