SONIA SOTOMAYOR IS AN EXCELLENT CHOICE FOR THE
U. S. SUPREME COURT
HER COMMENTS MADE IN 2002 ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT—HER EXPERIENCE COMING OUT OF POVERTY AND RISING TO THE HEIGHTS OF THE AMERICAN JUDICIAL SYSTEM MAKES HER A MORE RESPONSIVE JUDGE
The Republican Party is proving itself to be the Party of the rude, the unwise and the foolish. Comments made in the days since President Obama announced his selection of Sonia Sotomayor to fill the vacancy of George H. W. Bush’s biggest disappointment as Associate Justice of the Supreme Court—David Souter is an insult to the woman, to the Hispanic Community and to her extraordinary accomplishments both as a scholar and a jurist.
A woman who was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, and was in the top one percent of her class at Yale Law School and editor of Yale Law Review.—simply does not deserve the irresponsible and inane comment by Pat Buchanan on Hardball with Chris Matthews when he said, [paraphrase] “not smart enough to sit on the Supreme Court.”
“I'm not saying she's a racist, but the statement sure is," columnist Ann Coulter said on ABC's ‘Good Morning America.’”
As usual, the mouth, Rush Limbaugh, added his two senseless worth, "And the libs of course say that minorities cannot be racists because they don't have the power to implement their racism. Well, those days are gone because reverse racists certainly do have the power to implement their power. Obama is the greatest living example of a reverse racist, and now he's appointed one. ..."
Limbaugh again—“Limbaugh: Now, you want to enshrine racism on the Supreme Court. It's a setback for civil rights. Dr. King, you judge a person by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. it seems that all of his proponents have forgotten his number one goal...
Andrea Mitchell on her MSNBC program, Andrea Mitchell Reports, had as her guests, Pat Buchanan a hard right conservative and Bob Schrum, a Democratic political consultant.
“Mitchell: Do you disagree with anything Rush Limbaugh said?
‘Buchanan: Yeah, I do agree, I don't agree with some of the terms, but I do agree Sonia Sotomayor [he pronounces her name wrong, probably on purpose] does believe in race-based justice basically at the expense of white males and to advance people of color. The truth is that's what Barack Obama believes as well.’
Buchanan carried his nonsensical argument one step too far only to expose to the public his irrational prejudice against women and Hispanics. “She is not that intelligent.”
It is time for old Pat to go to church to pray to his right wing Catholic God that he be forgiven for his sins of commission, his bigotry toward Hispanics that decays the very flesh of his hard heartedness, and his chauvinism that infects his mind and his thinking.
Tom Tancredo, another know nothing Republican from Colorado, failed 2008 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination who wears this badge of bigotry on his sleeve; Gordon Baum, head of the Council for Conservative Citizens says of Tancredo "He's got the best track record in Congress, a "pro-white" group that lauds Tancredo for protecting America from a "full-scale invasion" of Latin immigrants.”
Tancredo, a former Congressmen and an avid anti-Hispanic dogmatist made these statements on The Ed Show [by the way, that is truly dumb name for a show; surely MSNBC can do better than that] on MSNBC:
Tancredo: “Unfortunately for her and fortunately for us there are plenty of things that we've even talked about her already. I'm telling you, she appears to be a racist. She said things that are racist in any other context...
Tancredo:”You can still be a racist and have all those things in your background. You can be a racist and have all that stuff in your background.”
We can only be thankful that the Republicans while prone to select incompetent kooks to lead their bid for the White House had the foresight to send Tancredo back to Colorado where he can escape into the mountain and never be heard from again.
We could not end the report without gleaning some profound insight from the other “big mouth” of the hard right, disgraced former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich who wrote on his blog---“Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman. Wouldn't they have to withdraw? New racism is no better than old racism. A white man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw."
And the always two faced right wing idiot, Dick Morris, issued this warning to his believers from his podium on The O’Reilly Factor , “She's gonna get confirmed. Get out of the way of the truck,"
An anonymous source representing those who have completely lost their minds and are about the business of spreading their insanity to those on the internet wrote this: “Could Mexico retake the southwestern United States? Get the DVD that says the invasion is already happening.”
She is also be dragged over the coals by the far, far right which at the moment is the loudest voice in the wounded, leaderless Republican Party, for being a member of National Council of La Raza commonly referred to as the NCLR. It is a not for profit sponsorship assemblage that concentrates on reducing poverty and discrimination and improving opportunities of Hispanics for assimilating into the larger society.
NCLR is not to be confused with La Raza Unida which is reality a third political party and the first and only one devoted to the causes of one ethnic group. Its stated goal is to assist Mexican-Americans to find better homes, more education and better job opportunities.
Sonia Sotomayor delivered a speech in 2002 before the University of California, Berkeley School of Law that is haunting her as her confirmation hearings are about to begin.
She is being called a racist, insufficiently intelligent, sexist, and of course to Republican the most demeaning label of all “liberal.”
I have read her 2002 speech in its entirety and as a Social Scientist, I find her position not only to be accurate, I find it to be late in coming to the debate on the effect of gender, race, sexual preference and political leanings to the judicial system and the final judgments by those on the bench.
Does one Republican think that my least favorite and the most fixated Justice on the Court believe that his conservative Catholic heritage does not taint his decision-making as an Associate Justice. If there is, may I introduce you to a real fool whose head is buried so deeply in the sands that they would not truth should they trip over it.
I am so convinced of the truthfulness of Judge Sotomayor’s premise in her speech at the University of California, I urge President Obama to consider the fact that the Court is filled to capacity with Catholics and his next appointment, and he will have another appointment, should come from another religious perspective.
As I said above, I have read every word of her speech and I ask you to read these excerpts for yourself to determine whether you think that the Limbaugh’s, Gingrich’s, Buchanan’s, Tancredo’s and Coulter’s of this world have ever issued a judgment about a Democrat that demonstrated “equal justice for all.”
· While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on perception, Judge Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law. Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, 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 color we do a disservice both to the law and society.
· I accept the thesis of a law school classmate, Professor Steven Carter of Yale Law School, in his affirmative action book that in any group of human beings there is a diversity of opinion because there is both a diversity of experiences and of thought.
· Yet, because I accept the proposition that, as Judge Resnik describes it, "to judge is an exercise of power" and because as, another former law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, states "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives — no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging," I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that — it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. Not all women or people of color, in all or some circumstances or indeed in any particular case or circumstance but enough people of color in enough cases, will make a difference in the process of judging.
· The Minnesota Supreme Court has given an example of this. As reported by Judge Patricia Wald formerly of the D.C. Circuit Court, three women on the Minnesota Court with two men dissenting agreed to grant a protective order against a father's visitation rights when the father abused his child. The Judicature Journal has at least two excellent studies on how women on the courts of appeal and state supreme courts have tended to vote more often than their male counterpart to uphold women's claims in sex discrimination cases and criminal defendants' claims in search and seizure cases. As recognized by legal scholars, whatever the reason, not one woman or person of color in any one position but as a group we will have an effect on the
· 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.
· 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.
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