My recent service on a jury re-instigated my love of law; a love I commonly overlook when I think about the future.
When Justice Souter announced he was retiring, I was in the library writing a religious studies paper. I hardly had time to think of whom Obama would choose. When Obama first announced his choice was Judge Sonia Sotomayor, I had just started summer and as much as I hate to admit it, the last thing I wanted to do was read anything academic or even touch a newspaper. Intense semester...I think yes. But now I am finally coming around to re-immersing myself into the news and the world. I don't know much about Sotomayor to be honest I didn't even know she was Latino until about the 5th time I heard her name, but my initial thoughts were: She was chosen because she is a woman. That bias soon transcended into the thought that she was chosen because she was BOTH a woman and Latino. Granted this view forms a simplistic way of looking at the nomination process. What I do know about Sotomayor is that she is extremely qualified,she has a great background story,and she will be confirmed (in the absence of any scandals arising from her past). Essentially a liberal justice will be replacing a liberal justice... so why does it matter? It matters in the sense that society needs a wise fair judge on the bench; that wise judge may be Sotomayor but it could very well be someone else. Like I said I was basically sleeping through the whole selection process, so I don't even know the other names that made it to the short list, but I would hate to have Sotomayor chosen over someone more qualified only because Obama needs to repay the Latino community. At age 54, she is a bit younger than I would like for a justice, because I personally support a year limit on the Justices' service and I believe older judges to be wiser and more effective at evaluating the cases. I can only hope that judges ask the right questions and discover the best solution for society, such as Solomon. When approached by two women both claiming to be the mother of a baby, Solomon threatened to cut the baby in half and this threat instantly revealed the true mother when she was prepared to give the baby to the other woman so it could live.
Also from the little information I know about the cases she has ruled on, it seems she has a somewhat racist bias, for instance her ruling that the freedom of speech inhibited NYC from firing a worker who posted a racist letter. She also ruled on the government's side in the eminent domain case of Didden v Village of Port Chester when the current owner of the property would have used the property for the same thing the government did: an establishment of a pharmacy. I don't always like to judge people on comments they say in passing that happen to make it on the record somewhere, but one can not simply ignore offhand comments and Sotomayor is no exception to that rule. She stated in a speech in California that although " judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices.....I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of colour we do a disservice both to the law and to society.”
Sotomayor is not my ideal candidate for the Supreme Court, but hopefully she will make impartial and wise decisions, despite her past comments.
I just hope this is the end of Obama's repayments, he already defied basic free market economics with his rash opinion to bailout the Big 3 in an attempt to pay back unions for their support. As a moderate I voted for Obama, hopefully he can start repaying me by doing what he believes is best for society and not worry about his constituents, because what policy serves us best may not make us happy in the short-term.
Obama made the political choice...and for economists all politics seem stupid and political decisions deviate far from the logical choices economists would execute.
2 comments:
First and foremost, you claim that Obama based his choice of Sotomayor on her gender. I argue, however, that Obama recognized the gender and ethnic imbalance of the Supreme Court and sought a nominee who would remedy the Court’s homogeneity. His critics feel that he should have based his nomination on qualifications alone, but I assert Supreme Court Justices should not only be the most diligent and competent legal minds in America, but also reflect the diversity and texture of our great nation. Simplifying Sotomayor’s judicial tenure to “a liberal justice’s replacement,” ignores her fervency, substituting her authoritativeness for Souter’s mild demeanor. In many ways, I feel she will have the ferocity to compete with Scalia’s dominant role on the Court. Why should Sotomayor be held to an impossible standard? Our sensitivity to her race and gender, citing Obama’s own “affirmative action bias,” would vanish if he had chosen an equally qualified white male candidate, assuring our own insecure selves that we won’t be passed up for the minority applicant. Citing Sotomayor’s “racist bias,” you implicitly claim that her race interferes with her impartiality. Yet, Obama defined his own search by a nominee’s empathy, an ambiguous criteria with unknown legal implications. Sotomayor’s decisions seems to transcend ideology, and unearth the truth and context of each individual case, as seen in Center for Reproductive Law & Policy v. Bush, 304 F.3d 183 (2d Cir. 2002), in which she affirms the Bush administration "is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds." Addressing Sotomayor’s rampant “racist bias,” which she relies on to further the plight of white, conservative pundits have eagerly cited her discrimination complaint filed during her time at Yale, and her Berkeley speech on “A Latina Judge’s Voice.” According to SCOTUSblog’s Tom Goldstein:
Of the 96 cases, Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and agreed with the claim of discrimination 10 times; the remaining 8 involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 cases favoring claims of discrimination, 9 were unanimous. (Many, by the way, were procedural victories rather than judgments that discrimination had occurred.) Of those 9, in 7, the unanimous panel included at least one Republican-appointed judge. In the one divided panel opinion, the dissent’s point dealt only with the technical question of whether the criminal defendant in that case had forfeited his challenge to the jury selection in his case. So Judge Sotomayor rejected discrimination-related claims by a margin of roughly 8 to 1.
In sum, in an eleven-year career on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has participated in roughly 100 panel decisions involving questions of race and has disagreed with her colleagues in those cases (a fair measure of whether she is an outlier) a total of 4 times. Only one case (Gant) in that entire eleven years actually involved the question whether race discrimination may have occurred. (In another case (Pappas) she dissented to favor a white bigot.) She participated in two other panels rejecting district court rulings agreeing with race-based jury-selection claims. Given that record, it seems absurd to say that Judge Sotomayor allows race to infect her decision-making.
I reject your claim that Obama nominated Sotomayor as a means of repaying the Hispanic community. The political shrewdness of Sotomayor’s nomination is unmistakable, but I maintain that Obama chose her based on her qualifications, rather than giving her a promotion rooted in affirmative action. As any president, Obama’s administration is fallible, and I personally disagree with some of his economic decisions, but don’t women and minorities deserve a voice on the Court? As someone who has a near obsession with reason, I admit that Obama’s search for an “empathetic” Justice evades logic, but I don’t think emotion should be discounted as a way of knowing.
Post a Comment