SC Nominee - Judge Sonia Sotomayor? [Archive]

Richard

05-26-2009, 06:42

MSM is reporting Clinton appointed Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor is being nominated to replace Justice Souter.

Sonia Sotomayor

UNITED STATES CIRCUIT JUDGE

United States Court of Appeals For The Second Circuit 10/13/98 to present

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Southern District of New York 10/2/92 to 10/12/98

PAVIA & HARCOURT

600 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10022
Partner 1/1/88 to 9/30/92
Associate 4/84 to 12/87

International commercial litigation, including the drafting of pleadings, all phases pre-trial discovery, motion practice, trials, and appellate briefs and arguments. Extensive experience in the arbitration of commercial and commodity export trading cases.

NEW YORK COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY'S OFFICE

New York, New York
Assistant District Attorney 9/79 to 3/84

Reponsibilities included investigation and evaluation of felony cases, grand jury presentations, pre-trial motion practice, bench and jury trials, appellate briefs and arguments.

EDUCATION:

YALE LAW SCHOOL
New Haven, Connecticut
J.D., June 1979
Editor, Yale Law Journal
Managing Editor, Yale Studies in World Public Order
Semi-finalist, Barristers Union

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Princeton, New Jersey
B.A., summa cum laude, June 1976
Member, Phi Beta Kappa
Co-winner, M. Taylor Pyne Honor Prize - prize awarded annually to the senior(s) who has most clearly manifested excellent scholarship and effective support of the best interests of Princeton University
Honorable mention, Senior Thesis, Latin American Studies

HONORARY DEGREES:

Brooklyn Law School
Degree of Juris Doctor Honoris Causa
June 7, 2001

Princeton University
Degree of Juris Doctor Honoris Causa
June 5, 2001

Herbert H. Lehman College
Degree of Doctor of Law Honoris Causa
June 2, 1999

PUBLICATIONS:

Statehood and the Equal Footing Doctrine: The Case For Puerto Rican Seabed Rights, 88 Yale Law Journal 825 (1979).

Sonia Sotomayor & Nicole A. Gordon, Returning Majesty to the Law and Politics: A Modern Approach, 30 Suffolk U.L. Rev. 35 (1996).

ASSOCIATIONS:

Adjunct Professor, New York University School of Law since 1998.
Lecturer-in-law, Columbia Law School since 1999.
Member, American Bar Association.
Member, Hispanic Bar Association.
Member, Puerto Rican Bar Association.
Member, Association of Judges of Hispanic Heritage.
Member, New York Women's Bar Association.
Member, American Philosophical Society.
Former Member, Second Circuit Task Force on Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness In the Courts.
Former Member, New York City Campaign Public Finance Board (Mayor's Appointee). 1988-1992.
Former Member, Board of Directors, State of New York Mortgage Agency (Governor's Appointee), 1987-1992.
Former Member, Board of Directors, Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, 1980-1992.

LANGUAGES:

English and Spanish

Obama picks Sotomayor for high court
AP, 26 May 2009

President Barack Obama tapped federal appeals Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court on Tuesday, officials said, making her the first Hispanic in history picked to wear the robes of a justice.

If confirmed by the Senate, Sotomayor, 54, would succeed retiring Justice David Souter. Two officials described Obama's decision on condition of anonymity because no formal announcement had been made.

Administration officials say Sotomayor would bring more judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice confirmed in the past 70 years.

A formal announcement was expected at midmorning.

Obama had said publicly he wanted a justice who combined intellect and empathy — the ability to understand the troubles of everyday Americans.

Democrats hold a large majority in the Senate, and barring the unexpected, Sotomayor's confirmation should be assured.

If approved, she would join Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the second woman on the current court.

Sotomayor is a self-described "Newyorkrican" who grew up in a Bronx housing project after her parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico. She has dealt with diabetes since age 8 and lost her father at age 9, growing up under the care of her mother in humble surroundings. As a girl, inspired by the Perry Mason television show, she knew she wanted to be a judge.

A graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, a former prosecutor and private attorney, Sotomayor became a federal judge for the Southern District of New York in 1992.

As a judge, she has a bipartisan pedigree. She was first appointed by a Republican, President George H.W. Bush, then named an appeals judge by President Bill Clinton in 1997.

At her Senate confirmation hearing more than a decade ago, she said, "I don't believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it."

In one of her most memorable rulings as federal district judge, Sotomayor essentially salvaged baseball in 1995, ruling with players over owners in a labor strike that had led to the cancellation of the World Series.

As an appellate judge, she sided with the city of New Haven, Conn., in a discrimination case brought by white firefighters after the city threw out results of a promotion exam because two few minorities scored high enough. Ironically, that case is now before the Supreme Court.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090526/ap_on_go_su_co/us_obama_supreme_court

Richard's $.02 :munchin

longrange1947

05-26-2009, 07:16

Please let the Blue Dog Democrates speak out.

rubberneck

05-26-2009, 07:28

Given the circumstances this is the best possible outcome a conservative could realistically expect. While she is liberal she doesn't appear to Ruth Bader Ginsburg rabid ACLU liberal. She seems much closer to the middle than any nominee a "centrist" like Bill Clinton rolled out. Of course that could all change once she is on the bench for life. The man she is replacing was supposed to be a moderate conservative and he turned out to be a flaming liberal, so who knows. Hopefully Obama has just had his George Herbert Walker Bush moment.

Ret10Echo

05-26-2009, 07:59

The "Souter" factor makes it a crap-shoot.

Her quote concerning Constitutional interpretation (during Senate confirmation)was most likely for show....or maybe for real. Either way it could be a problem for 2nd ammendment rights depending on how you read it.

armymom1228

05-26-2009, 08:01

Well the comment she made;

At her Senate confirmation hearing more than a decade ago, she said, "I don't believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it."

Perhaps is a good indication of her politics. She has the experience, and the credentials to be a good Justice. There is a body of evidence and rulings that should prove her leanings.

OTOH........

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/judge-sotomayors-appellate-opinions-in-civil-cases/

From the SCOTUS blog

Since joining the Second Circuit in 1998, Sotomayor has authored over 150 opinions, addressing a wide range of issues, in civil cases. To date, two of these decisions have been overturned by the Supreme Court; a third is under review and likely to be reversed. In those two cases (and likely the third), Sotomayor’s opinion was rejected by the Supreme Court’s more conservative majority and adopted by its more liberal dissenters (including Justice Souter). Those outcomes suggest that Sotomayor’s views would in many respects be similar to those of Justice Souter

The Reaper

05-26-2009, 08:24

rubberneck

05-26-2009, 08:32

I concur, though I disagree with her decision in the New Haven firefighter discrimination case. She appears to be willing to support discrimination, as long as it is against the right people.

TR

It is interesting that you mention the firefighter case. I read earlier that the appeal of that case is to be heard during the next court session. In a footnote on the appeals level one of the other Judges came right out and said that her interpretation of the law was completely wrong. We could have a case where a sitting Justice is reprimanded by the rest of the court, or at least a majority of the court. Wouldn't that make things a bit uncomfortable. Welcome to the Court Justice Sotomayor, and oh by the way your decision in that case was incompetent.

Ret10Echo

05-26-2009, 08:39

It is interesting that you mention the firefighter case. I read earlier that the appeal of that case is to be heard during the next court session. In a footnote on the appeals level one of the other Judges came right out and said that her interpretation of the law was completely wrong. We could have a case where a sitting Justice is reprimanded by the rest of the court, or at least a majority of the court. Wouldn't that make things a bit uncomfortable. Welcome to the Court Justice Sotomayor, and oh by the way your decision in that case was incompetent.

Confirmation hearings should be interesting. Might be a good C-SPAN webcast to watch. :munchin

Dozer523

05-26-2009, 09:52

Jesuit HW Christ! What is this world coming to?
First the Concealed Carry in National Parks and now this SC Nominee?!!?:p

Blitzzz (RIP)

05-26-2009, 10:01

Except the NRA...Oh well, I didn't check if there was a Peuto Rican NRA. maybe somewhere in South LA.

Penn

05-26-2009, 10:08

I like this pick. If you know Da Bronx, and are familiar with the deeply embedded Catholic attitude of the New York Puerto Rican community, I think you will find her to be a social quasi-conservative. I am married to one. She is deeply proud of her heritage and believes, as does most of her family, (and they reflect the gambit of our entire society) that there is no free lunch. That does not mean affirmative action is dead, or that social programs will not find her support, it does mean that as a Latina she will expect the merits of each case to validate their relationship to the constitution. She will be slightly right of center on the constitution and slightly left on individual freedoms and social issues.

Also, I think the case was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court as Ricci v. DeStefano, and a ruling has not yet been issued.

Shar

05-26-2009, 13:13

I think they floated Napolitano's name out there as a possible pick just to make his actual pick seem totally acceptable. My initial thought was relief as it WASN'T Janet.

As to her specifically, I think she's as good as we could reasonably expect from Obama and better than I was thinking. And really, when you are talking about a replacement for Souter? How hard is it to improve?

Sigaba

05-26-2009, 13:27

The New York Times has collected some of Ms. Sotomayor's rulings and additional documents.

Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/05/26/us/0526-scotus.html).

kgoerz

05-26-2009, 15:22

The New York Times has collected some of Ms. Sotomayor's rulings and additional documents.

Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/05/26/us/0526-scotus.html).

So what I understand. Is according to her the 2nd amendment can be overridden by States. Example, California decides to make the ownership of all Gun illegal. They can, because the 2nd Amendment applies only to federal rulings. Not the States.
The MSM spin on her having absolutely no faults and her nomination being equal to Obama discovering a cure for Cancer has begun.

Roguish Lawyer

05-26-2009, 15:49

I will post my thoughts on her once I have some, but I will note at this time that there are two facts supporting this nomination:

1. She has Type-1 diabetes
2. She was a heavy smoker

;)

Richard

05-26-2009, 16:59

And so it goes...

Richard's $.02 :munchin

How, why Obama picked Sotomayor
Mike Allen & Jonathan Martin, Politico, 26 May 2009

President Barack Obama called Judge Sonia Sotomayor at 9 p.m. on Memorial Day to say she was his pick for the Supreme Court.

Obama showed he was willing to pick a fight with his choice — Republicans do not consider her a “consensus” nominee and had signaled that they considered her the most liberal of the four finalists.

He played smart base politics with the historic selection of a Hispanic (a first) and a woman.

And he fulfilled his pledge to pick someone with a common touch by nominating someone who was raised in a Bronx housing project, and lost her father at age 9.

Right after talking to Sotomayor on Monday night, the president telephoned the three other finalists, each of whom he had formally interviewed for the job — Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Solicitor General Elena Kagan and federal appeal Judge Diane Wood of Chicago.

Then the president called the two Senate leaders and ranking members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning.

By making the pick during a congressional recess, when lawmakers are back home or on far-flung foreign trips, Obama caught the Republican minority off-guard, with critics not equipped to respond with the force they would during the session.

Although the press reported that he had interviewed Wood, Sotomayor was at the White House for seven hours on Thursday without being discovered by reporters.

An Obama aide said the president, who interviewed her for an hour in the Oval Office, “was blown away by her — her personal story, her sharp intellect and confidence, and her experience as prosecutor, trial judge, litigator and appellate judge.”

There was a “full vet,” according to a senior administration official, and both her taxes and health were examined.

Sotomayor has diabetes, and White House aides consulted both her doctor and other doctors to ensure that she was fit to serve.

“I don’t think there’s any stone that’s been left unturned,” said a senior administration official.

Ironically, it’s the pick both sides wanted:

— As the most arguably liberal of the four finalists, Sotomayor provides the most fodder for conservative groups, which have vowed to spend millions of dollars on television advertising. Leaders hope a court brawl will help rebuild their movement.

— Democrats like that Justice David Souter is being replaced by a Hispanic woman, and feel sure she’ll be confirmed. As insurance, they note that when she was confirmed for the federal appeals court in 1998, among those voting for her were then-Sen. Bill Frist and then-Sen. Rick Santorum, both of whom are abortion opponents.

Democrats contend that Sotomayor does not have a long paper trail on hot-button social issues, especially abortion. In one case, the administration will argue she came down on the side of judicial restraint.

Sotomayor’s record on the divisive issue of abortion is murky. In 17 years on the federal bench, she has issued no opinions dealing directly with abortion rights. And in two cases dealing tangentially with the issue—involving anti-abortion protesters and the government right to limit abortion-related speech by foreign recipients of U.S. aid—the appeals court judge’s ruling favored abortion opponents. Still, anti-abortion forces are convinced that Obama would not nominate Sotomayor without being confident that she supports abortion rights.

Other arguments the administration will be making in support of Sotomayor:

— Her incredible American story and three decades of distinguished career in nearly every aspect of the law provide her with unique qualifications to be the next Supreme Court justice.

— As a prosecutor, litigator and trial and appellate judge, Sotomayor brings more federal judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice in 100 years, and more overall judicial experience than anyone confirmed for the Court in the past 70 years.

— Sotomayor is widely admired as a judge with a sophisticated grasp of legal doctrine and a keen awareness of the law’s impact on everyday life. She understands that upholding the rule of law means going beyond legal theory to ensure consistent, fair, common-sense application of the law to real-world facts.

Obama looked at “volumes of material” on the final four candidates and aides read the opinions and legal writings of over 40 prospects, according to a senior administration official. They narrowed the list to nine, of which information was obtained, before bringing in the final four to meet with the president.

Cynthia Hogan, Vice President Biden’s Counsel and a former Staff Director of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been chosen to help lead the confirmation effort along with Stephanie Cutter, according to a senior administration official. And Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY), an early backer of Sotomayor, is expected to play an active role as her home state’s senior senator.

But Obama aides are hoping to avoid a contentious battle with Senate Republicans.

“I hesitate to use the term war room because we’re not anticipating a war,” said a senior administration official of their confirmation preparations.

As for whether they’re inviting Republicans to oppose the first Hispanic on the high court and suffer the resulting political consequences, a senior administration official said: “We’re not daring anybody to do anything. We’re inviting people to support an outstanding nominee.”

But the same official said the president felt like her history-making appeal was a “positive thing.”

A top Democrat close to the White House was more candid about the political implications among a fast-growing constituency in some of the most pivotal presidential states.

“For those of us who think about electoral votes, we feel kind of good about it,” said the Democrat.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22970.html

rubberneck

05-26-2009, 17:07

What ever happened to the notion of finding the best candidate? I guess that died the same day as the Bork nomination did. Instead we get appointees who were chosen not because of their intellect but because they have great life stories or because it panders to a certain voting block. Yep, we're screwed.

Richard

05-26-2009, 17:13

Yep, we're screwed.

Nothing new to see here - let's move along. :rolleyes:

Richard's $.02 :munchin

charlietwo

05-26-2009, 17:28

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug-qUvI6WFo

Some of you may have heard this clip on the radio... not sure if it's showing up in the MSM yet, but the White House has already challenged a segment of it saying her words were taken out of context. Specifically around 0:26--

Sotomayor: "...the court of appeals is where policy is made, and I know, I know this is on tape and I should never say that because we don't "make law", I know. I know, I know." (laughter)

Listening to the rest of the clip I don't see holes in her logic necessarily, but if she says "she knows" that she shouldn't be saying it because it's totally wrong, perhaps she shouldn't be saying it at all.

Around 1:23-- She talks about how the court of appeals needs to look at how the law will play out based on a decision.

I don't like the cut of her jib. I'm far from a legal scholar, but I know what the judicial system is *supposed* to do, and I don't think she sees it the same way. Any legal masterminds out there want to throw their two cents in the pot?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug-qUvI6WFo

Richard

05-27-2009, 08:18

Here's the initial e-push by MoveOn.Org to try and influence the Sotomayor hearings.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Dear MoveOn member,

Today, President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to be the next U.S. Supreme Court justice. Of course, the Right is already fighting against her confirmation—so we need to get the facts out about her impressive qualifications and background.

Below is a list of 10 key things about Sonia Sotomayor that you might not know. Can you check it out and send it to 10 friends today? If each of us forwards the list, we can start to get the word out about Judge Sotomayor, and help to ensure that she gets a speedy and fair confirmation process.

Ten Things To Know About Judge Sonia Sotomayor

1. Judge Sotomayor would bring more federal judicial experience to the bench than any Supreme Court justice in 100 years. Over her three-decade career, she has served in a wide variety of legal roles, including as a prosecutor, litigator, and judge.

2. Judge Sotomayor is a trailblazer. She was the first Latina to serve on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and was the youngest member of the court when appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of New York. If confirmed, she will be the first Hispanic to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court.

3. While on the bench, Judge Sotomayor has consistently protected the rights of working Americans, ruling in favor of health benefits and fair wages for workers in several cases.

4. Judge Sotomayor has shown strong support for First Amendment rights, including in cases of religious expression and the rights to assembly and free speech.

5. Judge Sotomayor has a strong record on civil rights cases, ruling for plaintiffs who had been discriminated against based on disability, sex and race.

6. Judge Sotomayor embodies the American dream. Born to Puerto Rican parents, she grew up in a South Bronx housing project and was raised from age nine by a single mother, excelling in school and working her way to graduate summa cum laude from Princeton University and to become an editor of the Law Journal at Yale Law School.

7. In 1995, Judge Sotomayor "saved baseball" when she stopped the owners from illegally changing their bargaining agreement with the players, thereby ending the longest professional sports walk-out in history.

8. Judge Sotomayor ruled in favor of the environment in a case of protecting aquatic life in the vicinity of power plants in 2007, a decision that was overturned by the Roberts Supreme Court.

9. In 1992, Judge Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate without opposition after being appointed to the bench by George H.W. Bush.

10. Judge Sotomayor is a widely respected legal figure, having been described as "...an outstanding colleague with a keen legal mind," "highly qualified for any position in which wisdom, intelligence, collegiality and good character would be assets," and "a role model of aspiration, discipline, commitment, intellectual prowess and integrity."

Judge Sotomayor is an historic, uniquely qualified nominee to the Supreme Court. Let's get the word out and make sure we get a prompt, fair confirmation on her nomination.

Pete

05-27-2009, 09:08

"9. In 1992, Judge Sotomayor was confirmed by the Senate without opposition after being appointed to the bench by George H.W. Bush."

A lot of folks are making a big deal of the fact she was appointed by Bush the elder. I thought this was more of a "protected seat" and Dodd basicly gave her name to Bush and said "you will appoint her".

Anybody have the inside story on that.

Roguish Lawyer

05-27-2009, 11:28

Pete S

05-27-2009, 11:46

The MSM spin on her having absolutely no faults and her nomination being equal to Obama discovering a cure for Cancer has begun.

How dare you speak of St. Sotomayor in such a way.
She has been touched by the hand of the Anointed One.
Kissed by the devine will of the People.
:D

The Reaper

05-27-2009, 12:17

He appointed a whole bunch of liberal judges. Bipartisanship and all.

Yeah, you remember that.

Hey, didn't the People's candidate promise that he would govern in a bipartisan manner?:rolleyes:

TR

kgoerz

05-27-2009, 12:24

greenberetTFS

05-27-2009, 12:32

Bottom line
Republicans appoint Conservative Judges to the SC that agree with their policies.

Democrats appoint Liberal Judges to the SC that agree with their policies.

This nomination shouldn't shock or surprise anyone. Obama was voted in. He gets to decide. We might as well get use to it.

K,

Your right,we shouldn't have expected anything else.......:boohoo

GB TFS :munchin

The Reaper

05-27-2009, 12:49

Bottom line
Republicans appoint Conservative Judges to the SC that agree with their policies.

Democrats appoint Liberal Judges to the SC that agree with their policies.

This nomination shouldn't shock or surprise anyone. Obama was voted in. He gets to decide. We might as well get use to it.

Ford, Reagan, and Bush I appointed liberal judges.

If we change Congress in 2010, he may not get a rubber stamp on his wishes.

TR

Sigaba

05-27-2009, 13:32

Source is here (http://thehill.com/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=82801&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=70).

Critics focus on Sotomayor speech in La Raza journal
By Alexander Bolton
Posted: 05/27/09 01:36 PM [ET]

Senate Republicans investigating Sonia Sotomayor’s record are zeroing in on a speech she delivered in 2001 in which she stated her hope that a “wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences,” including appreciation for Latin-American cuisine, “would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

They are also taking a close look at the Supreme Court nominee's skepticism, expressed in the same speech, about whether it is possible for judges to “transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices.”

Sotomayor delivered the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. The Berkeley La Raza Law Journal published the lecture the following year.

Conservative critics have latched onto the speech as evidence that Sotomayor is an “activist judge,” who will rule on the basis of her personal beliefs instead of facts and law.

“Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see,” Sotomayor said. “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.”

Sotomayor also claimed: “For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir — rice, beans and pork — that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events.”

This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo — pigs’ tongue and ears — would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.

Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative-leaning advocacy group, said he wasn’t certain whether Sotomayor had claimed her palate would color her view of legal facts but he said that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee clearly touts her subjective approach to the law.

“It’s pretty disturbing,” said Levey. “It’s one thing to say that occasionally a judge will despite his or her best efforts to be impartial ... allow occasional biases to cloud impartiality.

"But it’s almost like she’s proud that her biases and personal experiences will cloud her impartiality.”

Conservative critics say that a willingness to rule on the basis of personal values instead of the law and legal precedent is at the core of judicial activism. And some Senate Republicans have said a nominee with a clear propensity toward activism would deserve a filibuster.

Levey, who has been in contact with other conservative activists and Republicans on Capitol Hill, predicted that the speech would be raised at Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing.

“I cannot imagine that Sen. Sessions and some of the other Republicans will not bring that up,” he said in reference to Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

“It’s fine to identify with Latina heritage all she wants, just not in the courtroom,” he said.

The Berkeley La Raza Law Journal did not respond to a request for comment.
Hopefully, the GOP will not fall into this trap set by the current administration and will find ways to vet Ms. Sotomayor without delving into the sinkhole of identity politics.

Roguish Lawyer

05-27-2009, 16:38

Sonia Sotomayor: In her Own Words

“Our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions.” A Latina Judge's Voice, 13 Berkeley La Raza L.J. 87 (2002).

“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 while male who hasn’t lived that life.” A Latina Judge's Voice, 13 Berkeley La Raza L.J. 87 (2002).

“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences…our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.” A Latina Judge's Voice, 13 Berkeley La Raza L.J. 87 (2002).

“Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.” A Latina Judge's Voice, 13 Berkeley La Raza L.J. 87 (2002).

“change--sometimes radical change--can and does occur in a legal system that serves a society whose social policy itself changes.” Returning Majesty to the Law and Politics: A Modern Approach, 30 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 35 (1996).

"The public expects the law to be static and predictable. The law, however, is uncertain and responds to changing circumstances." Returning Majesty to the Law and Politics: A Modern Approach, 30 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 35 (1996).

"[C]hange--sometimes radical change--can and does occur in a legal system that serves a society whose social policy itself changes. It is our responsibility to explain to the public how an often unpredictable system of justice is one that serves a productive, civilized, but always evolving, society." Returning Majesty to the Law and Politics: A Modern Approach, 30 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 35 (1996).

"[L]aws are written generally and then applied to different factual situations. The facts of any given case may not be within the contemplation of the original law." Returning Majesty to the Law and Politics: A Modern Approach, 30 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 35 (1996).

"BUT THE LAW DOES EVOLVE and to assist its evolution and at the same time maintain their own credibility, lawyers must dispel the view that they are dishonest, dissembling, hypocritical, or that Ben Franklin's description is correctly derisive." Returning Majesty to the Law and Politics: A Modern Approach, 30 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 35 (1996).

"[Jerome] Frank believed that in the complex, fast-paced modern era, lawyers do themselves a disservice by acceding to the public myth that law can be certain and stable." Returning Majesty to the Law and Politics: A Modern Approach, 30 Suffolk U. L. Rev. 35 (1996).

doctom54

05-27-2009, 20:36

I will post my thoughts on her once I have some, but I will note at this time that there are two facts supporting this nomination:

1. She has Type-1 diabetes
2. She was a heavy smoker

;)

What I tell patients is...

What do you call a diabetic who smokes?

DEAD

CRad

05-27-2009, 22:46

Example, California decides to make the ownership of all Gun illegal. They can, because the 2nd Amendment applies only to federal rulings. Not the States.

Do you think the States making decisions is a bad thing? What works for Washington DC does not always suit the interests of Washington, NC.

Nebraska gun laws wouldn't work for New York unless of course first day of deer season and first day of pheasent season are holidays for the good folks of NY too.

Some things work for the whole country and some things don't. Gun laws would be one of those things. If you were to ask me.

Richard

05-28-2009, 06:13

And the $64,000.00 question is... :rolleyes:

Richard's $.02 :munchin

kgoerz

05-28-2009, 07:13

Do you think the States making decisions is a bad thing? What works for Washington DC does not always suit the interests of Washington, NC.

Nebraska gun laws wouldn't work for New York unless of course first day of deer season and first day of pheasent season are holidays for the good folks of NY too.

Some things work for the whole country and some things don't. Gun laws would be one of those things. If you were to ask me.

Whats the first day of Hunting season in Nebraska being a Holiday have to do with the second Amendment?
We are are not talking about Hand Gun Permits or CCW laws. Its about States being allowed to completely take away rights and protection granted by the constitution. Not allowing law abiding Citizens to protect themselves better serves the interest of what State?
According to you it would be OK if Texas decided Police don't need PC to search homes, Cars and arrest people (no offense to you Texans out there)

The Reaper

05-28-2009, 07:25

Do you think the States making decisions is a bad thing? What works for Washington DC does not always suit the interests of Washington, NC.

Nebraska gun laws wouldn't work for New York unless of course first day of deer season and first day of pheasent season are holidays for the good folks of NY too.

Some things work for the whole country and some things don't. Gun laws would be one of those things. If you were to ask me.

So if NY (or any other state) wanted to deny you 1st, 4th, or 5th Amendment rights, as they interpreted tham, that would be okay with you as well?

The Bill of Rights to the Constitution guarantees inalienable rights to all Americans. States should be able to restrict privileges not guaranteed by the Constitution. A SC justice who thinks that states should be able to deny any Constitutional rights that they choose to does not, IMHO, understand the Constitution or the intent of the authors.

TR

Richard

05-28-2009, 07:44

And to get back on topic - this is probably about how it'll go with the confirmation hearings on Sotomayor. :rolleyes:

Richard's $.02 :munchin

The Reaper

05-28-2009, 15:05

Hmm.

Overruled three times out of five, and now moving up to judge lower court opinions.

Would you want a doctor who was wrong 60% of the time?

TR

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/27/60-reversal-of-sotomayor-rulings-gives-fodder-to-f/?feat=article_related_stories

Sotomayor reversed 60% by high court
By Stephen Dinan (Contact) | Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Judge Sonia Sotomayor already facing questions over her 60 percent reversal rate, the Supreme Court could dump another problem into her lap next month if, as many legal analysts predict, the court overturns one of her rulings upholding a race-based employment decision.

Three of the five majority opinions written by Judge Sotomayor for the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals and reviewed by the Supreme Court were reversed, providing a potent line of attack raised by opponents Tuesday after President Obama announced he will nominate the 54-year-old Hispanic woman to the high court.

"Her high reversal rate alone should be enough for us to pause and take a good look at her record. Frankly, it is the Senates duty to do so," said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America.

But opponents have an uphill battle.

Judge Sotomayor already has been confirmed for the federal bench twice: unanimously in 1992, when President George H.W. Bush nominated her to a district court, and by a vote of 67-29 in 1998, after President Clinton nominated her to the appeals court. Seven Republicans who voted for her in 1997 are still in the Senate, and White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said "they're certainly well positioned to support her again."

Mr. Gibbs dismissed questions about Judge Sotomayor's reversal rate, saying she wrote 380 majority opinions during her 11 years on the appeals court. Of those 380 opinions, the Supreme Court heard five of the cases and overturned her on three.

"The totality of the record is one that's more important to look at, rather than, like I said, some out-of-context or clipped way of looking at it," Mr. Gibbs said.

While Democratic senators were quick to back Judge Sotomayor, Republicans took a wait-and-see approach, saying they will judge her by her answers at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Still, Republicans will be under pressure from conservative and libertarian activist groups, who say the questions are mounting. The activists are looking forward to the Supreme Court's expected ruling next month in the Ricci case on race-based employment promotions.

continued at link above.

Roguish Lawyer

05-28-2009, 15:51

Opposing her is a losing battle. Given her health issues, one would think she won't be on the bench too long.

The Reaper

05-28-2009, 17:02

Opposing her is a losing battle. Given her health issues, one would think she won't be on the bench too long.

Okay, can I send her and the POTUS each a carton of Camel unfiltereds?:D

So opposing Estrada on the basis of his legal record and philosophy was a good thing for Dims, but opposing SM on the basis of her legal record and philosophy would be a bad thing for Republicans?

Who makes these rules?

TR

Roguish Lawyer

05-28-2009, 17:04

Okay, can I send her and the POTUS each a carton of Camel unfiltereds?:D

TR

Yes, and send me the bill!

Sigaba

05-29-2009, 12:37

The Economist's take on the nomination of Ms. Sotomayor.

Source is here (http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=13724728).

America's Supreme Court

Justice not for all
May 26th 2009 | WASHINGTON, DC
From Economist.com

EVEN before the announcement of Barack Obama’s choice for the vacant seat on the Supreme Court on Tuesday May 26th attack ads were up and clickable. Sonia Sotomayor, an appeals-court judge from New York, “didn’t give a fair shake in court to firefighters deprived [of] promotion on account of [their] race,” claimed an ad by the Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative group. “Every American understands the sacrifices firefighters make, but in Sotomayor’s court, the content of your character is not as important as the colour of your skin.”

The ad refers to Ricci v DeStefano, a case involving firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut. The city told firefighters who wanted to be promoted that they had to take a test. But when no black firefighters passed, the city ignored the results and promoted no one. Several white firefighters sued for racial discrimination. Ms Sotomayor ruled against them. The case is now before the Supreme Court, which is expected to overturn Ms Sotomayor’s original decision.

The impending argument about Ms Sotomayor will be riven with this sort of identity politics. Mr Obama’s feminist supporters have been urging him to pick a woman to replace David Souter, a Supreme Court justice who recently announced his retirement. They are unhappy that only one of the incumbents is female. Many Hispanics, meanwhile, are keen to see one of their own on the country’s highest court. Ms Sotomayor ticks both boxes.

Although Mr Obama was at pains to stress her intellect, her long experience on the bench and her respect for the constitution, he made it clear that her background matters a lot to him. Her parents came from Puerto Rico and she rose from humble circumstances to graduate with academic distinction from Princeton. And she appears to believe that her sex and ethnicity will make her a better judge. She once said she hoped 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.”

Conservatives argue that race and sex should be irrelevant when promoting judges—or firefighters. They contend that elected politicians should write laws and judges should apply them, or throw them out if they violate the constitution. They worry that Ms Sotomayor takes a more expansive view of judicial authority: she once said that appeals-court judges make policy.

Yet for all the heat Ms Sotomayor’s nomination is generating, she will almost certainly be confirmed by the Senate. Democrats have an ample majority—at least 59 seats out of 100. And Republicans are traditionally softer on the other party’s judicial nominees than are Democrats. Bill Clinton’s two nominees were confirmed by 96 votes to 3 and 87 to 9 respectively. Some Republicans say their party should copy the tactics of the Democrats who launched aggressive and personal attacks on conservative nominees such as Sam Alito, Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork. Cooler heads retort that this would backfire: Ms Sotomayor will be confirmed anyway and yet more Hispanic and female voters will desert the Republican Party.

Some observers think Ms Sotomayor will make little difference to the Court, since she is a liberal replacing another liberal. Not so. At 54, she is 15 years younger than Mr Souter, and Supreme Court appointments are for life. And Mr Souter was no stereotypical liberal. He tended to side with the court’s liberals on social issues such as abortion. But he took a conservative view of frivolous lawsuits against corporations and excessive punitive damages.

How Ms Sotomayor will shape the court is hard to discern. In cases of alleged discrimination because of race, sex or age, she has usually sided with the plaintiffs. But she once ruled that the right to free speech barred New York City from firing an office worker for posting a racist letter. And on one occasion she ruled against an abortion-rights group. Her decisions as an appeals-court judge will be examined minutely in the coming weeks. But up until now, she has been obliged to defer to precedents set by the Supreme Court. Once on the Supreme Court, she will be free to rule as she pleases, for two, three or even four decades to come.
An option for Ms. Sotomayor's vetting that is not yet receiving discussion is for the GOP to change entirely the tone of confirmation hearings. This new direction would focus on Ms. Sotomayor's intellectual ability and professional competence and sidestep issues of personal identity.

The hearings would be vigorous but not combative, intense but not contentious. Those observing the hearings, even people hostile to the GOP, would come away thinking "Those questions were brutally tough, but they were also fair."

Sigaba

05-30-2009, 15:50

Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/us/politics/30affirm.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print).

May 30, 2009
Sotomayor’s Focus on Race Issues May Be Hurdle
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

WASHINGTON — The selection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court has opened a new battle in the fight over affirmative action and other race-conscious remedies for patterns of inequality, with each side invoking the election of the first black president in support of its cause.

Judge Sotomayor, whose parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico, has championed the importance of considering race and ethnicity in admissions, hiring and even judicial selection at almost every stage of her career — as a student activist at Princeton and at Yale Law School, as a board member of left-leaning Hispanic advocacy groups and as a federal judge arguing for diversity on the bench.

Now conservatives say her strong identification with such race-based approaches to the law is perhaps the strongest argument against her confirmation, contending that her views put her outside an evolving consensus that such race-conscious public policy is growing obsolete.

“The American ideal is that justice should be colorblind,” said Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “As we see people like Barack Obama achieve the highest office in the land and Judge Sotomayor’s own nomination to the highest court, I think it is harder and harder to see the justifications for race-conscious decisions across the board.”

Mr. Cornyn added, “This is a hot-button issue and one that needs to be confronted head on.”

Gary Marx, executive director of the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network, said he saw a playbook for the campaign against Judge Sotomayor in the successful attacks on Lani Guinier, whose 1993 nomination to a top Justice Department post was withdrawn after an outcry over her writings arguing for alternative voting systems intended to better represent minorities.

“We will see ‘racial quotas’ become a much bigger issue than they might have been had another nominee been brought forward,” Mr. Marx said.

But civil rights advocates, including Ms. Guinier, say times have changed in their favor, also citing Mr. Obama’s election. In an interview, Ms. Guinier said she saw the debate over Judge Sotomayor’s nomination in part as an opportunity for civil rights advocates to push back against the kind of criticism that had thwarted her own nomination.

“It is easy to understand the idea of viewing an individual on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin,” Ms. Guinier said, but race also is a social phenomenon of politics, history and economics that demand deliberate policy responses.

Americans often see the issue in an either-or way — “ you are race-conscious or race-neutral,” she said. “But the election of Barack Obama has served as an emancipatory moment, and people are ready to discuss and listen to more nuanced arguments.”

Having Mr. Obama as a spokesman is different as well, said Hilary O. Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. “The American people chose change — symbolically, but in policy as well,” Mr. Shelton said. “The American people see things differently now.”

What is more, many civil rights groups say, Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation could provide an anchor against the current direction of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who has led the more conservative bench toward a sweeping re-examination of government reliance on racial classifications, whether in school desegregation plans or landmark voting rights laws.

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote in 2007, summing up his approach in one of the most memorable lines of his opinions.

Samuel Issacharoff, a professor at New York University Law School, said, “There is a tendency to say ‘The time has run, things are different, change has happened,’ ” adding, “It is an emerging theme of the Roberts court.”

Judge Sotomayor is not known to have identified herself as a beneficiary of affirmative action, but she has described her academic struggles as a new student at Princeton from a Roman Catholic school in the Bronx — one of about 20 Hispanics on a campus with more than 2,000 students.

She spent summers reading children’s classics she had missed in a Spanish-speaking home and “re-teaching” herself to write “proper English” by reading elementary grammar books. Only with the outside help of a professor who served as her mentor did she catch up academically, ultimately graduating at the top of her class.

She became the outspoken leader of a Puerto Rican student group, leading other Hispanics to file a complaint against Princeton with the federal government to force the hiring of Hispanic faculty members and administrators. “She was very passionate about affirmative action for women and minorities,” said Charles Hey, another Puerto Rican student.

At Yale Law School, she was co-chairman of a group for Latin, Asian and Native American students — a catchall group for nonblack minorities. There she led fellow students in meetings with the dean to push for the hiring of more Hispanic faculty members at the law school. And, friends say, she shared the alarm of others in the group when the Supreme Court prohibited the use of quotas in university admissions in its 1978 decision Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

As a lawyer, she joined the National Council of La Raza and the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund, two Hispanic civil rights groups that advocate for vigorous affirmative action. As a judge, she has repeatedly argued for diversity on the bench by alluding to the insights she gleaned from her Latina background.

In one of the few cases dealing with the subject that she helped decide on the federal appeals court, Ricci v. New Haven, she ruled in favor of the city’s ’s decision to discard the results of an exam to select firefighters for promotion because too few minority firefighters scored high enough to advance. White firefighters who had scored well on the discarded test sued, and the Supreme Court heard arguments on the case in April.

“Her nomination and the Ricci case have brought racial quotas back as a national issue," said Mr. Marx of the Judicial Confirmation Network.

The public response, however, is hard to foresee. Few groups conducted public polls on the issue as it faded in recent years, and the results from those that did reveal a consistent ambivalence, said Michael Dimock, a pollster with the nonpartisan Pew Research Center.

When asked a question about “affirmative action or preferential treatment for minorities,” the public has consistently opposed the idea by a margin of two to one. But when asked about “affirmative action programs designed to help women and minorities,” an even bigger majority has supported them.

And, Mr. Dimock said, the election of Mr. Obama does not appear to have changed either result.
Ms. Sotomayor's hearings provide the GOP an excellent opportunity to re-present itself to American voters. The message should not change but the delivery merits refinement.

If senate Republicans are going to pursue a line of questioning that focuses on identity, race, and affirmative action during Ms. Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, I hope that they avoid playing "gotcha" and instead focus on facilitating a national discussion of these issues.

Sigaba

05-31-2009, 13:28

Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/weekinreview/31liptak.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print).

The piece references a study published in the Yale Law Journal that is available here (http://yalelawjournal.org/images/pdfs/211.pdf).

The article also references a study published in the Columbia Law Review. That study is available here (http://www.columbialawreview.org/assets/pdfs/108/1/Cox___Miles.pdf). Interestingly, the article uses the pronoun "she"--an increasingly common practice among academics--when referring to judges but the study does not examine the role gender may play in how judges reach their decisions.:munchin
May 31, 2009
The Waves Minority Judges Always Make
By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON — Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black member of the Supreme Court, ended his 24 years there bitter and frustrated. He had been unable, he said, to persuade his colleagues in many cases concerning racial equality, the cause to which he had devoted his life.

“What do they know about Negroes?” Justice Marshall asked an interviewer. “You can’t name one member of this court who knows anything about Negroes before he came to this court.”

But the other justices did get to know Justice Marshall, and even the more conservative ones acknowledged that his very presence exerted a gravitational pull more powerful than his single vote.

“Marshall could be a persuasive force just by sitting there,” Justice Antonin Scalia told Juan Williams in an interview for a biography of Justice Marshall, recalling the justices’ private conferences about cases. “He wouldn’t have to open his mouth to affect the nature of the conference and how seriously the conference would take matters of race.”

President’s Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to serve on the Supreme Court, where she would be the first Hispanic and the third woman, has raised questions about how her background would affect her decision-making. But there is another question, too: How would she alter the larger dynamic among the justices?

The first woman on the court, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, often says that wise old women and wise old men reach the same conclusions. But empirical research on federal appeals courts tugs in another direction.

In sex discrimination and sexual harassment cases, according a 2005 study by Jennifer L. Peresie in The Yale Law Journal, “female judges were significantly more likely than male judges to find for plaintiffs.”

Perhaps more surprisingly, the study found, “the presence of a female judge significantly increased the probability that a male” on a three-judge panel “supported the plaintiff in the cases.” Indeed, “panels with at least one female judge decided cases for the plaintiff more than twice as often as did all-male panels.”

A study in The Columbia Law Review last year found a similar effect in voting rights cases. “When a white judge sits on a panel with at least one African-American judge,” the study, conducted by Adam B. Cox and Thomas J. Miles, concluded, “she becomes roughly 20 percentage points more likely to find” a voting rights violation.

In an interview, Ms. Peresie, a Washington lawyer, cautioned against extrapolating to the Supreme Court from studies of appeals courts. “Maybe one out of nine is different from one out of three,” Ms. Peresie said.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve on the Supreme Court and currently the only female justice, said that she and Justice O’Connor, who preceded her, brought a distinct perspective to the court.

“As often as Justice O’Connor and I have disagreed, because she is truly a Republican from Arizona, we were together in all the gender discrimination cases,” Justice Ginsburg recently told Joan Biskupic of USA Today.

But Justice Ginsburg said her own influence in all sorts of cases at the justices’ conferences was uncertain. “I will say something — and I don’t think I’m a confused speaker — and it isn’t until somebody else says it that everyone will focus on the point,” Justice Ginsburg said.

Mark Tushnet, a law professor at Harvard and an authority on the Supreme Court, said Justice O’Connor’s arrival at the court “did affect the way other justices responded.”

“These are older guys,” Mr. Tushnet said. “They haven’t dealt with women on a professional basis on the whole.” Similarly, he said, “very few of the present justices have interacted as equals with Hispanic professionals.” All justices bring their life experiences to the bench in some sense, of course, and Justices Marshall, O’Connor and Ginsburg seemed to devote special attention to cases involving the groups they belonged to.

In a 1992 reminiscence, Justice O’Connor wrote that Justice Marshall was “constantly pushing and prodding us to respond not only to the persuasiveness of legal argument but also to the power of moral truth.” She recalled the moving stories Justice Marshall would tell to support his view that racism played a pernicious role in the administration of capital punishment.

It is not clear, though, that any of those stories caused Justice O’Connor to change her vote. “Justice O’Connor was not nearly as sympathetic to racial civil rights claims as she was to gender claims,” said Lawrence Baum, a political science professor at Ohio State.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the second African-American justice, is by some measures the most conservative justice since 1937, while Justice Marshall was the most liberal. “Thomas is living proof and a daily reminder that not everyone from a particular background has a particular point of view,” said David J. Garrow, a historian at Cambridge University, in England.

Judge Sotomayor has attracted attention for her musings in a 2001 speech about the impact her background might have on her decision-making, remarks a White House spokesman on Friday said reflected a poor choice of words.

“I would hope,” she said, “that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

She added, in a less noted passage, that giants on the court, including Justice Benjamin Cardozo, the second Jewish justice, had on occasion stumbled. “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,” Judge Sotomayor said.

Still, many judges say that the law is a set of neutral principles that can be applied mechanically and ought not to vary depending on the judge applying them.

Justice Felix Frankfurter, dissenting in a 1943 decision that struck down a law requiring students to salute the flag, reminded his colleagues that he was, as a Jew, a member of “the most vilified and persecuted minority in history” and thus likely to be sympathetic to a broad interpretation of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. “But as judges,” he went on, “we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic.”

Cases with special resonance for Hispanics may not have quite the same profile as cases concerning religion, race and gender, but the Supreme Court will nonetheless face several of them in the years to come, particularly in the areas of immigration, election law and language education in the public schools.

The presence of a Hispanic justice, Professor Tushnet said, will have the usual effect. “Every time there’s a new justice,” he said, “everybody has to say, ‘How will he or she react if I say this?’ ” That is not only an outsider’s view. Justice David H. Souter, the justice whom Judge Sotomayor hopes to replace, has written that the addition of a new judicial perspective necessarily unsettles the existing ones on a court.

“Anyone who has ever sat on a bench with other judges knows that judges are supposed to influence each other, and they do,” Justice Souter wrote in a 1998 dissent in a death penalty case. “One may see something the others did not see, and then they all take another look.”

Blitzzz (RIP)

05-31-2009, 14:52

Sympathy and the Law are miserable bedfellows. The Law is for all people and sympathy is for a select few, but all will be affected by the few.

An aside, all the Happy horse shit about fitting a type for Obama is the crap of legand. She is picked for her anti gun legislation. Yo help the anointeds agenda.

Counsel

06-01-2009, 09:42

Counsel

06-01-2009, 10:11

I haven’t read any of the decisions written by Judge Sotomayor so my opinion is a basic general one as to the nomination process. However, one must consider this statistic, if true: 5 appeals heard from 380 decisions. Also, keep in mind that the 380 decisions were not entirely of her writing/doing as other Judges in the Panel had to concur with her initial and final judgment.

Having said that, consider that independently from the ideological (“political/social”) views of the POTUS that submits a SC nomination if said nominee is finally sworn as a SC Judge there is no guarantee whatsoever that he/she will follow the ideological views of the POTUS. Plus, they are not alone meaning they still will have convince the other Judges as to a how a case should be decided. From my perspective, I would only want the Judge to rule on the basis of the facts of each case and apply the law accordingly. Not more, not less. Those decisions will not be written on stones and can/will be amended as the times require them to be. As society’s conscience evolves so does the SC’, albeit in a much slower pace.

Hey, just my 02.

Defender968

06-01-2009, 10:31

Now, now, Counsel, you know better that to take isolated quotes without giving the benefit of the complete text. I recall something about the correct context and stuff… :cool:

Counsel please explain to me how the following statement is not racist REGARLESS of context.

I would hope that a wise white man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a black female who hasn’t lived that life.

Racism is racism regardless of who does it, I'm pretty sick and tired of the double standard that exists. If a white male said the above he would be drummed out of politics, labeled a racist and his career would be destroyed, and rightfully so.

The reality is that no one lives the same life, some people of all colors live harder lives than other people, race has NOTHING to do with it, socioeconomic constraints have way MORE to do with life difficulties than race, but even those who are in higher economic classes face difficulties, some more than others.

Now let me tell you how I view the context, she is a judge and they were asking her about making judicial decisions, now I don't give a flying F$% if those decisions are about a white, black, Asian, Hispanic, or purple man, woman, child, or freaking Martian, the last time I checked the LAW is SUSPOSED TO BE BLIND so race shouldn't make a difference. If a person believes that their judgment is better based on their race then they are a RACIST period. There is NO context in which one race is smarter, wiser, or better than another period, each race has it's morons and it's geniuses, it's experts and it's village idiots.

craigepo

06-01-2009, 10:42

So if NY (or any other state) wanted to deny you 1st, 4th, or 5th Amendment rights, as they interpreted tham, that would be okay with you as well?

The Bill of Rights to the Constitution guarantees inalienable rights to all Americans. States should be able to restrict privileges not guaranteed by the Constitution. A SC justice who thinks that states should be able to deny any Constitutional rights that they choose to does not, IMHO, understand the Constitution or the intent of the authors.

TR

Well, sort of. The supreme court has come up with this great idea called "the incorporation doctrine", which holds that certain provisions in the bill of rights apply to the states, while others don't. It is up to the supreme court to decide which apply. For example, the Court has held that 1st amendment guarantees apply to the states. However, the "quartering of soldiers" amendment(the 3rd I think) has never been address. The obvious problem with all of this is that we have unelected judges essentially legislating.

We conservatives have a problem with any supreme court appointee at present. Because we have sent up some really crappy republicans in the last few years(earmark kings, washed-up politicians who have lost their way, etc.), we have been soundly defeated at the polls. Resultingly, we are now in the minority of votes in both the house and senate. So, we can cry all we want, but until we go out and recruit good candidates, and help them win, we are stuck.
(disclaimer: I am leaving my judge job next year to run for the missouri senate.)

Richard

06-01-2009, 10:45

PRB

06-01-2009, 11:09

Her 2nd. Amendment history is totally anti citizen gun ownership. She believes the Constitution does not allow gun ownership rights to us...this goes back to a paper she wrote in college in the 70's.....in her activist mind the second amendment only applies, as she's articulated from the bench, to the District of Columbia. The States have no 2nd Amendment rights!
This site will fax your State/Fed politicians.

http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm

Admin guys feel free to move this thread wherever

kgoerz

06-01-2009, 15:51

Counsel please explain to me how the following statement is not racist REGARLESS of context.

Racism is racism regardless of who does it, I'm pretty sick and tired of the double standard that exists. If a white male said the above he would be drummed out of politics, labeled a racist and his career would be destroyed, and rightfully so.

The reality is that no one lives the same life, some people of all colors live harder lives than other people, race has NOTHING to do with it, socioeconomic constraints have way MORE to do with life difficulties than race, but even those who are in higher economic classes face difficulties, some more than others.

Now let me tell you how I view the context, she is a judge and they were asking her about making judicial decisions, now I don't give a flying F$% if those decisions are about a white, black, Asian, Hispanic, or purple man, woman, child, or freaking Martian, the last time I checked the LAW is SUSPOSED TO BE BLIND so race shouldn't make a difference. If a person believes that their judgment is better based on their race then they are a RACIST period. There is NO context in which one race is smarter, wiser, or better than another period, each race has it's morons and it's geniuses, it's experts and it's village idiots.

I don't think she is a hate filled raciest. But I do believe she was honestly saying/believing that she deserves this nomination more then a white Male.
Why, many in our society truly believe that something is owed to them. Look at this weeks cover photo of her in Time Magazine. It's titled Latina Justice. Justice for what?
Have Latinos been so badly treated in this country that we now owe them opportunities based on race. We live in a time when it is the norm for people to be rewarded for just doing their jobs. Or doing nothing at all. Sadly this is only the beginning of this trend.
The one group of people we should be counting on to point out whats wrong with our Government are doing the exact opposite. The MSM is nothing more then an Obama administration Cheer leading Squad. It's painful not having a public voice right now.

Sigaba

06-01-2009, 16:16

When does the past end and the present begin when it comes to addressing issues of race and gender in America?

Do we need a prolonged national discussion to decide the nature of the issues? A score card to tally every instance of injustice? A constitutional convention? Reparations? Affirmative action in a revised form?

IMHO, I believe that we are all racists. Human beings are innately flawed. One of those flaws is that we are very good at hatred. Racism is one of the best selling brands. (The best selling brand remains sexism.)

I also do not believe that a political figure's career should hinge upon one statement alone. America has been playing "gotcha" for too long and we're all much the worse off for doing so. YMMV.

Richard

06-01-2009, 16:20

For me, the issue of race comes up every spring when the NASCAR season begins and during the Memorial Day weekend at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. :p

Maybe life would be less complicated and we'd be better off if more justices were NASCAR and Indy 500 fans, too. ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoQNXWgopg

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Defender968

06-01-2009, 17:01

MOO - the idea that there are any judges who do not weigh the accumulation of their life experiences and opinions - whether willful or not - into their judicial decisions is naive to the point of being ludicrous; the fact that someone like Judge Sotomayor would openly admit to such is even more so. :eek:

Richard's $.02 :munchin

I will agree that all people stand according to where they have sat, but when your decisions are colored by the race card I have an issue with that, I was an LEO, I did not prey on any gender or race, I arrested based on the law, I never singled out a race or passed judgment based on race, you commit a crime that you needed to be arrested for, you get cuffed, I simply applied the law as my LE commission required equally and based only on each individuals actions, it is not only possible but it is what is required of a judge or LEO, if one cannot do that they have no business in the criminal justice system IMO.

I don't think she is a hate filled raciest. But I do believe she was honestly saying/believing that she deserves this nomination more then a white Male.
Why, many in our society truly believe that something is owed to them. Look at this weeks cover photo of her in Time Magazine. It's titled Latina Justice. Justice for what?
Have Latinos been so badly treated in this country that we now owe them opportunities based on race. We live in a time when it is the norm for people to be rewarded for just doing their jobs. Or doing nothing at all. Sadly this is only the beginning of this trend.
The one group of people we should be counting on to point out whats wrong with our Government are doing the exact opposite. The MSM is nothing more then an Obama administration Cheer leading Squad. It's painful not having a public voice right now.

I agree with you that I don't think she's a hate filled racist, but once one goes down the racist road that's just a further development of the problem. Believing any race is inherently superior to another is not a quality I want on the SC regardless.

Pete S

06-01-2009, 17:16

IMHO, I believe that we are all racists. Human beings are innately flawed. One of those flaws is that we are very good at hatred. Racism is one of the best selling brands. (The best selling brand remains sexism.)

That is definately true, with exception to believing that the underlying emotion is hate.

What really drives all human descrimination is fear.

People fear everyone not like themselves.
It is not exclusive to any particular culture.

Richard

06-01-2009, 17:24

What really drives all human descrimination is fear.

Whatever happened to lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride - the stuff of Shakespeare and Bosch? ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Defender968

06-01-2009, 20:26

Echelon I also do not believe that a political figure's career should hinge upon one statement alone. America has been playing "gotcha" for too long and we're all much the worse off for doing so. YMMV.

I can agree with you on that as well, and in this case I think when all is said and done you'll see that the one comment is not simply all there is to this, her ruling on the New York Fire Fighter case is a very strong indication, when taken with her comments of her thoughts on race and the law.

In the NY case had all the top test scorers been black, Asian, Hispanic or any other minority and they department threw out the test in favor of more white applicants I believe she would have ruled the exact opposite. The fact that she was ok with discrimination against whites is very telling IMO.

Again as I said before racism is racism regardless of who's on the giving and receiving sides. If it's racism when whites do it then it's racism when anyone else does it, wrong is wrong regardless.

I judge people by their actions, that’s how I want/expect to be judged, that's how I was as an LEO, and that’s how I believe everyone should be judged, regardless of race, religion, or creed. If she can't set aside her personal issues with race to do that, and it certainly appears to me that she can't, then she has no business wearing a robe.

Just my .02

The Reaper

06-01-2009, 20:50

Should a black or Hispanic be treated the same under the law as a white person?

How about a female instead of a male?

Who decides what discrimination is acceptable?

Should Michael Jordan's kids receive preferential treatment over a poor white or Hispanic child, based on the color of their skin?

Is this acceptable?

Are we a nation of laws, or not?

I thought we had amended our Constitution to reflect equality under the law.

Is equal protection under the law the rule of the land, or not?

Does Judge Sotomayor believe that this discrimination is acceptable?

Was Judge Sotomayor serious when she said that a female Hispanic would be "wiser" in decision making than a white male?

Should we accept a Justice to our highest court with this record of prejudice?

Should Justice be blind if she is?

TR

Richard

06-01-2009, 21:04

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Roguish Lawyer

06-02-2009, 11:31

One of my partners argued a case in front of her recently. She is extremely intemperate on the bench. Very result-oriented and angry.

Sigaba

06-02-2009, 12:43

Source is here (http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A174B2F7-18FE-70B2-A8B40A786DA8249F).

Sotomayor explains 'wise Latina'
By: Manu Raju
June 2, 2009 10:51 AM EST

Judge Sonia Sotomayor attempted to clarify her controversial remark Tuesday that a "wise Latina woman" could reach a "better" decision than a white male, telling Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy that "ultimately" and "completely" a judge should follow the law.

Leahy, who met privately with Sotomayor on Tuesday, said he usually doesn’t discuss what was said in private meetings with Supreme Court nominees.

But given the attacks that have been launched because of her remarks, Sotomayor gave Leahy clearance to give her response to the public.

Sotomayor told Leahy that what she meant is that people have different backgrounds but "there is only one law," and "ultimately and completely" she would follow the law.

Leahy didn't clarify whether Sotomayor acknowledged misspeaking, as even President Barack Obama has. Leahy said Sotomayor talked about her judicial philosophy, which can be guided by experiences but at the end of the day it comes down to rule of law.

The comments were the first response indirectly from Sotomayor since conservatives began attacking her as an activist judge — with some questioning whether she is racially biased. The Leahy meeting came on a whirlwind day for Sotomayor on Capitol Hill, where she’s meeting with several top senators in private meetings followed by photo ops.

Sotomayor did not talk about the “wise Latina” remark in a later meeting with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

"We talked about the idea of personal feelings to some degree, how it would influence the decisions, how it would not,” Sessions said.

Echoing remarks she made to Leahy, Sotomayor also told Sessions that a judge would "ultimately and completely" follow the law. Sessions said their conversations weren't detailed enough to assuage any concerns about whether she's an "activist" judge.

Sessions committed to her that she would have fair hearings, and said he was "very impressed" with her knowledge, experience and energy level, though he still would rather wait until September for hearings.

Leahy is also pushing for an accelerated hearing schedule, adding that because of the attacks on Sotomayor, it would be "irresponsible" of him to wait until September for her confirmation hearings. He said hearings won't happen in June, meaning that July hearings are likely given that Congress is on recess for much of August.

Sotomayor kicked off her day with a 30-minute meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), followed by meetings with Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the commttee's ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and lunch with New York Democrats Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

In a brief statement, Reid praised Sotomayor, according to a pool report.

"Everyone in America, I want them to understand that we have the whole package here," Reid said, listing Sotomayor's academic and professional background. "If that wasn't enough, her background is very significant — we could not have anyone better qualified," Reid said.

Reid said that Sotomayor had a "compelling story" and said: "I think your story is so compelling. Americans identify with the underdog, and you've been the underdog so many times in your life."

Neither took questions from reporters.

Sotomayor also had meetings scheduled with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). All except Reid, McConnell and Gillibrand sit on the Judiciary Committee, which is vetting the appellate judge's nomination.

Feinstein said Tuesday she too will ask Sotomayor to clarify her now infamous "wise Latina" remark, and will probably ask her how she views the Constitution’s right to privacy — a key precursor question in regards to abortion rights.

"I’d just like to get to know her first, she’s got a good work history," Sessions said Monday. "She has a remarkable life story — there may be some other questions I’ll ask her, but a lot of that will just be private conversations between us to try to get to know each other a little better."

Confirmation hearings have not been set for the nominee, who is still filling out paperwork sent out by the committee and needs to submit to an FBI background check. President Barack Obama wants her confirmed before Congress adjourns for its August recess, but Republicans are pushing for a final vote to take place before September.

Republicans have questioned some of her rulings and statements, raising concerns about whether she'll bring an agenda to the bench. Democrats have scoffed at the criticism.

"I believe strongly she deserves an the opportunity to deal with the complaints against her, to express her explanations for various things we see in the papers today and be given a chance to do that," said Sessions, whose own nomination to the federal judiciary was rejected by the Judiciary Committee in 1986. "I do think that it is very important that anybody that serves on the U.S. Supreme Court be committed to faithfully execute the law, they show restraint, that they are modest, that they are objective, that they call the balls and strikes fairly no matter what teams are on the field. They don’t favor one team over another and so, there are some things that have been raised that are serious that we need to explore sooner or later."

Counsel

06-02-2009, 13:35

Echelon

I judge people by their actions, that’s how I want/expect to be judged, that's how I was as an LEO, and that’s how I believe everyone should be judged, regardless of race, religion, or creed. If she can't set aside her personal issues with race to do that, and it certainly appears to me that she can't, then she has no business wearing a robe.

Just my .02

As I have said before, I haven’t read her decisions, but keep in mind that from the brief summary I read about the firefighter case she basically upheld the law of the state.

Counsel

06-02-2009, 13:41

One of my partners argued a case in front of her recently. She is extremely intemperate on the bench. Very result-oriented and angry.

That after one hearing or a couple?

Gypsy

06-02-2009, 18:18

Judge Sonia Sotomayor attempted to clarify her controversial remark Tuesday that a "wise Latina woman" could reach a "better" decision than a white male, telling Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy that "ultimately" and "completely" a judge should follow the law.

Perhaps I'm just too dull today, but those two statements are distinctly different and cannot be construed as "misspeak".

That these people continue to get away with saying one thing and meaning another in such blatant ways just makes me ill.

Peregrino

06-02-2009, 18:19

National Review Article.

Rule of Law, or Rule of Lawyers?
Sotomayor claims an unlimited license for judicial activism.

By Andrew C. McCarthy
It’s not the rule of law, it’s the rule of lawyers: That’s the central message conveyed by Pres. Barack Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, a judge of the Second Circuit federal appeals court, to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court next October.

Obama and the lawyers in his administration are fond of invoking the rule of law. Yet that golden standard stands on the conceit, honored more in the breach than in the observance, that “we are a nation of laws, not of men.” It holds that there is an objective corpus of law — of the community’s reasoned consensus, shorn of passion, fear, or favor — under which we’ve agreed to be governed and to which those chosen to represent us owe their fidelity. It’s a nice ideal. Increasingly, though, our real governing standard is the one made infamous by the legendary litigator Roy Cohn: “Don’t tell me what the law is. Tell me who the judge is.”

Our ideal of judging was perhaps best explained by John Roberts during his 2005 confirmation hearings. The judge is like an umpire, Roberts mused. The umpire calls balls and strikes; he doesn’t design or alter the rules of the game. That’s how it’s supposed to work. The judge’s courtroom is the level playing field where even the visiting team can win if the law — the objective law — is on its side. Sure, the crowd and the local paper will root, root, root for the home team. The rules, however, don’t have a rooting interest. Justice is blind. The umpire is there to see that justice is done — not manufactured.

The president doesn’t view the world that way. He wants the umpire to pick winners and losers, not simply to preside over a fair fight — “fair,” in this context, meaning a fight under rules agreed upon before the game gets started. Thus, in a 2001 interview that gained some notoriety but not much mainstream analysis, Obama faulted the Warren Court for not being radical enough. It failed, as he saw it, to “break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution.” Instead of clinging to the traditional interpretation of our founding law as “a charter of negative liberties” that says only what government “can’t do to you,” the judges should have remade the Constitution to reflect what government “must do on your behalf.”

Therein lies the problem. In point of fact, the Constitution does state a few important things government must do on our behalf. But they are things like providing for the common defense — things it must do for everyone equally, just as the “negative liberties” are things it mustn’t do to anyone equally, like suppress political speech or conduct unreasonable searches. But President Obama sees government not as guarantor of freedom but as caretaker, providing certain guaranteed outcomes (a “fair” wage, a “decent” home, “adequate” health care, etc.) regardless of how industrious and responsible his charges seem to be. That isn’t American law, because American law, at its core, is about equal protection — equal treatment before the bar of justice. Uncle Sam is not a rich relation. He’s an empty vessel, filled only by what Americans pay in. He can’t give to one without taking from the other. And if the other doesn’t want to give, Uncle Sam has to press his thumb on the scales of justice.

That is not the rule of law, it is the rule of lawyers. It is the claim that something extraneous to the law, to the antecedent rules we all agree to live by, should be dispositive in a given case. And that something is the lawyer-turned-judge’s subjective sense of right and wrong, of fairness stemming from the judge’s unique life experience. The president euphemistically calls this “empathy,” but it is nothing more than the lawyer unconstrained by the law.

And the lawyer unconstrained by the law is the umpire unconstrained by the rules — which is to say, she is no umpire at all. She is a fan, a part of the crowd, subject to all the crowd’s biases, boosterism, and irrationality. That these traits come wrapped in a law degree does not make them more attractive. When they come wearing a robe, they can be monstrous.

Judge Sotomayor is unabashed in claiming license to judge, and, indeed, to make law, in accordance with her feelings and her politics, which are decidedly leftist. For her, the nation’s appellate courts are the places “where policy is made” by judges, not the places where policy already made by the public is applied by judges. And as she proclaimed in a 2002 speech, legal decisions by judges of her background should be affected by their “experiences as women and people of color.” She insisted, in fact, that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

A truly wise judge would know the rule of law doesn’t change depending on whether it’s being read by a Latina woman or by a white male — but the rule of lawyers does.

— National Review’s Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad (Encounter Books, 2008).

armymom1228

06-02-2009, 18:24

Perhaps I'm just too dull today, but those two statements are distinctly different and cannot be construed as "misspeak".

That these people continue to get away with saying one thing and meaning another in such blatant ways just makes me ill.

Not dull at all, never seen you misunderstand a statement like that.

She said what she said, and meant what she said. No backpedaling or "I meant to say, or you misunderstood my meaning." will every make it right in my mind. I was hoping she was just a female replacement for Justice Souter. I fear she is something far worse. How can one make law from the bench when the Constitution is so very clear on what it says.

Counsel

06-03-2009, 08:14

Razor

06-03-2009, 08:35

swpa19

06-03-2009, 08:44

that have made statements with meanings they later tried to change

Im in agreement with both Gypsy and Razor. Another example is Brian Deese a 31 year old (not yet graduated) Yale Law student who was appointed by Obama to oversee the dismantling of GM.

Will he retract his statement that this appointment scares him to death?

Shar

06-03-2009, 10:33

I can't say what Gypsy meant to imply, but I personally infer her statement "these people" to refer to the slew of public figures over the past two years, predominantly from a particular political party, that have made statements with meanings they later tried to change through further explanation or claims of speaking in error.

Or when Michelle Obama says that for the first time she was proud to be an American? Stuff like that?

I'm pretty darn sure Gypsy was condemning all these people who don't really mean what they say and have the guts to back it up. You have to give the Coulters and Limbaughs of the world some credit for when they say inflammatory things, they stand behind them.

The "misspeaks" (on both sides of the aisle) are kinda ridiculous. My favorite part is when it's a celebrity misspeak and they follow the PR recipe and promptly check themselves in to rehab afterward.

Sigaba

06-03-2009, 10:56

You have to give the Coulters and Limbaughs of the world some credit for when they say inflammatory things, they stand behind them.
I disagree.

Coulter, Limbaugh, Maher, Stewart, and others build their fortunes by exploiting the degraded state of political discourse in contemporary America.

Pete

06-03-2009, 11:12

I disagree.

Coulter, Limbaugh, Maher, Stewart, and others build their fortunes by exploiting the degraded state of political discourse in contemporary America.

I disagree. They build their fortune by pointing out what the MSM should have pointed out.

If the MSM treated the left and right equally talk radio would soon have little to say.

Richard

06-03-2009, 11:14

VDH weighs in with some pertinent points-of-view to consider.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

The Sotomayor Nomination and the Politics of Racial Identity

One of the unexpected results of the Sotomayor nomination is a refocusing on the politics of racial identity and the fossilized institutions of affirmative action — or the belief that the U.S. government should use its vast power to ensure an equality of result rather than a fairness of opportunity.

In the last fifty years, United States has evolved into a complex multiracial state. Race no longer is necessarily an indicator of income or material success — as the record of, say, Japanese-Americans or, indeed Asians in general, attests.

And what criterion constitutes race itself nowadays, when almost every family has someone who is half-Hispanic, a quarter-Asian, one-half black, or part Pakistani? What percentage of one’s lineage ensures purity of race, or qualifies for minority status? Are California Hispanics minorities, or so-called whites that are now a smaller percentage of the state population?

And what constitutes racial authenticity? Lack of income? An absence of success in the American rat race? Is the fourth generation upper-class Cuban a “Hispanic” who should qualify for affirmative action because his name is Hillario Gonzalez? Does the one-quarter aristocratic Jamaican qualify for American redress on account of his partial blackness?

And how does affirmative action — or even the fuzzy notion of “diversity” — adjudicate all this without mirror-imaging the statisticians of the Old Confederacy who could precisely calibrate the 1/16 drop of black blood? The university where I taught was full of South Americans and Europeans with Spanish surnames that allowed their various departments to be considered “ethnically diverse,” while others, having Russian émigrés, or the foreign born from New Delhi, Israel, and Egypt, struggled to satisfy the dictates of diversity czars.

In other words, affirmative action, and the racial identity politics that fuel it, are swamped by their inherent racialist contradictions — and made irrelevant by the dynamism of popular culture of the last three decades in which intermarriage, assimilation, and integration have challenged the notion of racial fides itself.

What are we left then with?

A mess. And a rather mean and nasty mess at that.

(cont'd)

Lost in the Labyrinth of Race
Victor Davis Hanson, 31 May 2009

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson053109B.html

Sigaba

06-03-2009, 13:09

Source is here (http://www.commentarymagazine.com/printarticle.cfm/judge-sotomayor--in-her-own-words-15179).

Judge Sotomayor, in Her Own Words
Peter Wehner Web Exclusive

A lot of controversy has been generated by Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s statement “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.” In an effort to repair the damage, President Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said, “Well, I think if you look at the context of the longer speech that she makes, I don’t — I think what she says is very much common sense in terms of different experiences that different people have.”

Having decided to take Mr. Gibbs up on his challenge, I have read Judge Sotomayor’s 2001 lecture, delivered at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. (It was later published in the Spring 2002 issue of the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal.) What is clear is that Ms. Sotomayor’s locution wasn’t simply a stray line or lazy formulation, as President Obama would have us believe. It was, instead, a line that perfectly captured a particular worldview. It acted as a capstone to an argument.

There are several important passages to analyze in Judge Sotomayor’s lecture (which I will quote at length, to ensure the context is fair). They include this one:

While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on perception, Judge [Miriam] 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. Whatever the reasons why we may have different perspectives, either as some theorists suggest because of our cultural experiences or as others postulate because we have basic differences in logic and reasoning, are in many respects a small part of a larger practical question we as women and minority judges in society in general must address. 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.

And this one:

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.

And this one:

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. There is always a danger embedded in relative morality, but since judging is a series of choices that we must make, that I am forced to make, I hope that I can make them by informing myself on the questions I must not avoid asking and continuously pondering.

In reading her lecture – which I would urge everyone who comments on Judge Sotomayor to do – one gets the sense she has more or less given up on the notion of overcoming “sympathies and prejudices” to reach fairness and integrity “based on the reason of law.” The main thrust of her argument is to rebut the proposition put forth by Judge Cederbaum that there is danger in gender-based and ethnic-based judging. The “aspiration of impartiality” is just that, an aspiration – and a fanciful one to boot. Because our gender and national origins will have a profound effect on our judgment, we should simply accept those limitations. Nor is there is an “objective stance”; there is, rather, a “series of perspectives.” And according to Sotomayor, her Latina perspective is superior to all others.

This line of reasoning is at the core of identity politics, which is a step beyond the multiculturalism embraced by those on the Left. She takes a perfectly reasonable and obvious fact – we are all shaped by our experiences, therefore making perfect objectivity an impossible standard to meet – and seems to give up on the quest for impartiality. Since there is no “universal definition of wisdom,” then wisdom resides elsewhere, not in reason but in gender and culture, with particular minorities and in particular life experiences. It is actually a “disservice both to the law and society” to ignore our differences. This explains how she can say – indeed, it explains why she almost must say – “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.”

It should be added that the issue Judge Sotomayor identifies – our incapacity as individuals to ascertain Wisdom – has a solution in our judicial system, called common law. This is the notion that we rely on precedent and customs in order to determine what is just and fair. We do not look only to ourselves; we look to those who came before us. But Sotomayor appears to have little interest in such matters.

It is not simply that Judge Sotomayor’s reasoning, at least as embodied in her UC Berkeley Lecture, would lead her to make up the law as she goes along. She believes that people of a particular ethnic experience are better able to make things up as they go along. In that sense, it is not “relative morality” she is advocating; it is identity politics. It means judging people, on the most important matters, by the color of their skin and by their particular ethnic origins – with some intrinsically better than others. It is, in other words, exactly what the American conception of justice, as embodied by its greatest exponents – from Lincoln to King – stood against.

President Obama picked a nominee who in a lecture and law journal essay proudly articulated the case for identity politics. If he were what he promised to be – forthcoming, candid, unwilling to play tired old political games – Obama would say so. Instead he pretends otherwise. This is not change we can believe in.

Is the sharpening focus on Ms. Sotomayor's alleged preference for identify politics going to help or to hinder a discussion of the broader issues her comments address?

Gypsy

06-03-2009, 17:54

And by "these people" you mean? :munchin

I can't say what Gypsy meant to imply, but I personally infer her statement "these people" to refer to the slew of public figures over the past two years, predominantly from a particular political party, that have made statements with meanings they later tried to change through further explanation or claims of speaking in error.

The reference seemed pretty clear to me; are you intentionally trying to bait here, counselor?

Razor answered perfectly for me. Thank you, Razor.

That said, Counsel, I believe you know exactly what I meant.

Richard

06-03-2009, 17:57

Razor answered perfectly for me. Thank you, Razor.

That said, Counsel, I believe you know exactly what I meant.

But would your political opposition in Congress? ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Gypsy

06-03-2009, 18:13

But would your political opposition in Congress? ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Yes, because I'd stare right at 'em whilst verbalizing my very comment. :D

Point made, next time I'll be more specific and say "those damned dims" instead of "those people." :p

Though as Counsel has been a member for a couple of years I'd have guessed he would be able to glean a person's leanings by now...

Richard

06-03-2009, 22:07

This one's interesting when compared to the VDH piece, Lost in the Labyrinth of Race.

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson053109B.html

Richard's $.02 :munchin

First lady Michelle Obama joins push for Sotomayor
AP, 3 Jun 2009

The White House dispatched first lady Michelle Obama to defend Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday, part of a broad offensive to humanize the judge that came as former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich backed off his harsh criticism of her as a racist.

Mrs. Obama told students at a high school graduation that Sotomayor is "more than ready" to be a justice and compared the judge's life story of humble beginnings and high achievement to the paths taken by her husband and herself.

Sotomayor, who grew up in a New York City housing project and went on to Princeton and Yale universities, "says she still looks over her shoulder and wonders if she measures up," Mrs. Obama said at Howard University, chiming in on Sotomayor's behalf as her husband began a Mideast trip.

It was a subtle but pointed counter to Republicans who have cited Sotomayor's speeches and writings about how her background affects her work as a judge to question whether she would let her personal biases interfere with her judicial decisions.

Hours earlier, Gingrich told supporters in a letter that he shouldn't have called Sotomayor a racist, adding that the word had been "perhaps too strong and direct." But he said the 2001 speech that prompted his remark, in which Sotomayor said she hoped the rulings of a "wise Latina" would be better than those of a white male without similar experiences, was still unacceptable.

Gingrich conceded that Sotomayor's rulings have "shown more caution and moderation" than her speeches and writings, but he said the 2001 comments "reveal a betrayal of a fundamental principle of the American system — that everyone is equal before the law."

Sotomayor, 54, would be the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the high court.

Gingrich's comments and similar ones by radio host Rush Limbaugh — who on Wednesday said Sotomayor would bring "racism" and "bigotry" to the court — have enraged Sotomayor's backers and caused problems for GOP figures who have been pushing to bring more diversity to the party.

Hispanic groups began a political push to force Republicans to denounce harshly worded criticism of Sotomayor, warning that their votes could depend on it.

"These gross mischaracterizations of Judge Sotomayor coupled with the deafening silence of the Republican leadership are leaving many within our community with a disturbing picture of the Republican Party. Much hangs in the balance, including our votes," said Janet Murguia, the president and CEO of the National Council of La Raza.

The White House, working with Democratic senators, hit back at GOP charges that Sotomayor would be an activist who legislates from the bench or a justice who allows her personal bias to interfere in legal decisions. Officials circulated talking points calling Sotomayor "a nonideological and restrained judge," citing conservatives who have praised her approach.

Wendy Long of the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network, a group leading the opposition to Sotomayor's confirmation, called the document "the biggest piece of fiction writing I have ever seen."

At the same time, Democratic senators circulated a 1994 speech in which Sotomayor spoke about how personal characteristics could affect judging, which Republicans never criticized during the 1997 debate on her confirmation to a federal appeals court — proof, the Democrats said, that conservatives are trying to politicize Sotomayor's nomination.

In 1994, Sotomayor said, "I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion" than a wise man. "What is better?" she said. "I ... hope that better will mean a more compassionate, caring conclusion."

"No one made an issue out of Judge Sotomayor's comments the last time the Senate confirmed her for the federal bench, because everyone understood what she meant and knew her respect for the rule of law was unquestionable," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Sotomayor's home-state senator and her sponsor during the confirmation process.

Sotomayor returned to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a second day of meetings with senators, staying mostly mum in public. She has used the visits to reassure Republicans and Democrats alike in private that while her background has shaped her worldview, she believes in following the law and wouldn't let her life experiences inappropriately influence her judgments.

But many Republicans sounded unconvinced.

"When I look at her ideology, record and philosophy, I'm deeply troubled," said Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., a member of the Judiciary Committee, after meeting with Sotomayor on Wednesday.

Graham said the judge doesn't deserve to be called a racist but that she should be challenged by senators. "She needs to prove to me and others ... that, if they found themselves in litigation with a Latina woman, you fill in the blanks, that she would give you a fair shake," he said.

Sotomayor visited 10 Republicans and Democrats as the leaders of the Judiciary Committee met separately but reached no deal on when her confirmation hearings should begin.

Sen. Pat Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary Committee chairman, wants the process to begin next month, with the goal of holding a confirmation vote before Congress leaves in early August for a monthlong summer vacation. He's negotiating with the top Republican on the committee, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who says he'd rather go slower in delving into Sotomayor's voluminous record of rulings during her 17 years as a federal judge, with hearings set for September.

Obama is pushing for a quicker timetable, hoping to spare Sotomayor the potential pitfalls of a drawn-out public debate on her confirmation during the customary August news lull. He also wants her seated in time to participate in discussions at the high court in September on which cases to hear when the session begins in October.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090604/ap_on_go_su_co/us_sotomayor_supreme_court_51

Razor

06-04-2009, 09:16

In 1994, Sotomayor said, "I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion" than a wise man. "What is better?" she said. "I ... hope that better will mean a more compassionate, caring conclusion."

Is it coincidence that the author left out the key adjective 'Latina' from the included quote with no annotation of the omission, or was this just another example of a 'mistype'? :rolleyes:

I'm less concerned about the potential racist brouhaha (and I agree with using the term 'racist', as Messrs. Merriam & Webster define the word as " a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race", which ties in rather seamlessly with the judge's comment), than I am with the fact that Judge Sotomayor is currently 3 for 5 on having her decisions overturned by the very body she looks to join, and is likely soon to be 4 for 6, or in other words has made the wrong legal decision 2/3rds of the time on cases of national importance. Would you let a doctor that has killed or maimed 2/3rds of his patients operate on you or a loved one?

Sigaba

06-04-2009, 11:28

....Judge Sotomayor is currently 3 for 5 on having her decisions overturned by the very body she looks to join, and is likely soon to be 4 for 6, or in other words has made the wrong legal decision 2/3rds of the time on cases of national importance. Would you let a doctor that has killed or maimed 2/3rds of his patients operate on you or a loved one?
TR provided the source for the comment below (initial source is here (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/may/27/60-reversal-of-sotomayor-rulings-gives-fodder-to-f/?feat=article_related_stories)).
Mr. Gibbs dismissed questions about Judge Sotomayor's reversal rate, saying she wrote 380 majority opinions during her 11 years on the appeals court. Of those 380 opinions, the Supreme Court heard five of the cases and overturned her on three.
Is the percentage 60% (3 out of 5) or, as White House press secretary Gibbs suggests, 0.79% (3 out of 380)?

Before hinging an argument on either statistic, I hope that the GOP does its homework. It would be embarrassing to find out that sitting federal judges nominated and confirmed by Republicans had similar stat lines.

Counsel

06-04-2009, 11:47

The reference seemed pretty clear to me; are you intentionally trying to bait here, counselor?

What…bait…me; for crying out loud, whatever gave you that idea Razor? ;)
I love this place! :cool:

Counsel

06-04-2009, 12:07

Though as Counsel has been a member for a couple of years I'd have guessed he would be able to glean a person's leanings by now...

I know the point you were trying to make. But hey, what’s life without a little controversy. Plus, one can never be too precise as to the point he/she is trying to make.

Listen, when Jugde Sotomayor finally sits on the bench of the SC, she will be just another Judge, with equal power and responsibility (as to Court decisions and rulings) as the rest of them. She will have to deal with and play along with all the boys and girls already there. She will not be a left wing extremist. Not because I know something in particular, but because the Court as a whole won’t let here. This is a conservative Court and it will be for the foreseeable future. If anything, she will become a lone dissident vote.

Respectfully my 02.

Counsel

06-04-2009, 12:37

than I am with the fact that Judge Sotomayor is currently 3 for 5 on having her decisions overturned by the very body she looks to join, and is likely soon to be 4 for 6, or in other words has made the wrong legal decision 2/3rds of the time on cases of national importance.

Point taken. But to keep it in context, we need to remember that out of 380 decisions, only 5 have gone before the SC. :munchin

Razor

06-04-2009, 12:47

I tend to look at it as 5 of her (and her fellow judges') decisions were deemed important enough to hear. How many hundreds to thousands more coming out of the federal appellate system are not heard? These 5 (soon to be 6) have a common characteristic. If it walks like a duck...

The Reaper

06-04-2009, 14:04

Point taken. But to keep it in context, we need to remember that out of 380 decisions, only 5 have gone before the SC. :munchin

Counsel, are you agreeing with her statements, positions, decisions, and work, or are you merely supporting the home team?

TR

Pete

06-04-2009, 14:32

.... She will not be a left wing extremist. Not because I know something in particular, but because the Court as a whole won’t let here. This is a conservative Court and it will be for the foreseeable future. If anything, she will become a lone dissident vote. ........

Ah, I don't know what to say. I'm thinking.

Have there been more 5-4 decisions or 8-1 decisions this past session?

Just wondering.

Counsel

06-04-2009, 14:43

Counsel, are you agreeing with her statements, positions, decisions, and work, or are you merely supporting the home team?

TR

Reaper, are you trying to obtain more information from this hostile witness? :D

I can’t deny that I am partially bias in support of this nominee. However, my previous comments were posted to try to persuade for a reflection of the complete picture of a body of work. The numbers are there and the decisions are written for all to see, so it is what it is. Hopefully the Senate will do its job and evaluate on the merits instead of political BS.

Sigaba

06-04-2009, 14:47

Data on 2008 SCOTUS decisions are available here (http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/122/nov08/statistics08.pdf).

Data on 2007 SCOTUS decisions are available here (http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/121/nov07/statistics07.pdf).

Data on 2006 SCOTUS decisions are available here (http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/120/nov06/statistics06.pdf).

The methodology used is elaborated here (http://www.harvardlawreview.org/issues/119/Nov05/Statistics.pdf).

A question for those interested in answering.

What is your preferences for SCOTUS decisions? Some want a lot of 5-4 and 6-3 votes. Others want 8-1 and 9-0 votes.:munchin

Counsel

06-04-2009, 15:02

Ah, I don't know what to say. I'm thinking.

Have there been more 5-4 decisions or 8-1 decisions this past session?

Just wondering.

Maybe the correct word would have been "voice" instead of vote. :munchin

The Reaper

06-04-2009, 15:10

Reaper, are you trying to obtain more information from this hostile witness? :D

I can’t deny that I am partially bias in support of this nominee. However, my previous comments were posted to try to persuade for a reflection of the complete picture of a body of work. The numbers are there and the decisions are written for all to see, so it is what it is. Hopefully the Senate will do its job and evaluate on the merits instead of political BS.

She is going to be confirmed. Bank on it.

The question is whether the double standard of hard line opposition is virtuous by the Dims, and obstructionist by the partisan Republicans. Disagreeing with a person's stated postions is not the same as being anti-Hispanic or racist.

If pointing out a liberal jurist's statements and decisions is somehow inappropriate, then this county is headed down the final long slide into oblivion.

Presenting a speech lauding your ethnicity as rendering you capable of better legal decisions than someone of another race is, in fact arrogant AND racist. I am sure that it played well in San Juan and certain parts of the Northeast. IMHO, it disqualifies you from sitting on the highest court in this land as an impartial jurist, just as it would David Duke. As a petitioner to the court, I would have to wonder if I would be treated the same by Ms. Sotomayor as if I were a Hispanic female? The question has to be asked now.

As noted earlier, among others, I would have preferred Condi Rice or J.C. Watt for POTUS over John McCain or BHO. That makes me a conservative, not a racist. Where were the Dims and Hispanic supporters when it was Miguel Estrada under fire?

I would respectfully offer that supporting a candidate based on the color of their skin, their gender, or their name, while admitting their checkered legal history is a questionable practice.

Sigaba:

Minor point.

The Supreme Court Of The United States is SCOTUS, not "SOCTUS".

TR

KClapp

06-04-2009, 15:50

Hopefully the Senate will do its job and evaluate on the merits instead of political BS.

And I'm sure the Earth will stop rotating on it's axis. :rolleyes:

Pete

06-04-2009, 15:57

...What is your preferences for SOCTUS decisions? Some want a lot of 5-4 and 6-3 votes. Others want 8-1 and 9-0 votes.:munchin

If they were going by the law it should be 9-0 every time. Well, OK, up to a few 7-2s.l

It's not the folks on the right finding things that aren't there.

It's not the folks on the right saying we should look to Europe for help in the court's findings.

It's not the folks on the right saying things like "living, growing document", "need to change with the times". etc, etc.

There is a problem with letting your gender or race decide a case.

Take a bad case before the SCOTUS and let the plaintiff win because of race or gender and it becomes the law of the land. The next person to bring a similar case to a lower court but the race or sex is reversed - well, the "wrong" person will win based on the previous rulling.

Thats why it is so important for a Judge to rule on "the law" not feelings.

And that's why a Judge who rules on the law scares the hell out of liberals.

Roguish Lawyer

06-04-2009, 17:14

There is a significant difference between the Rule of Law and the Rule of Judges. Sotomayor believes in the latter.

Richard

06-04-2009, 17:28

Personally, I always tried to live by the Rule of Boozing - buying a strange woman a drink is OK, buying all of her drinks is stupid. Worked most of the time, too. Guess I was lucky I never ran into Ms Sotomayor and her 'hispanic voice' either in a bar or in a courtroom...although I'm sure it would have been memorable for both of us. :rolleyes:

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Defender968

06-04-2009, 18:39

Below is the full text of the speach Judge Sotomayor gave that we are discussing, I wanted to read the whole thing to determine if there was some sort of context which made her statements somehow not racist.

While she may be a qualified judge she is as biased as I expected, and should be disqualified to serve on SCOTUS, but I'm sure our wonderful reps in D.C. who are shredding our constitution will push her right through.

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/05/26_sotomayor.shtml

Judge Reynoso, thank you for that lovely introduction. I am humbled to be speaking behind a man who has contributed so much to the Hispanic community. I am also grateful to have such kind words said about me.

I am delighted to be here. It is nice to escape my hometown for just a little bit. It is also nice to say hello to old friends who are in the audience, to rekindle contact with old acquaintances and to make new friends among those of you in the audience. It is particularly heart warming to me to be attending a conference to which I was invited by a Latina law school friend, Rachel Moran, who is now an accomplished and widely respected legal scholar. I warn Latinos in this room: Latinas are making a lot of progress in the old-boy network.

I am also deeply honored to have been asked to deliver the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos lecture. I am joining a remarkable group of prior speakers who have given this lecture. I hope what I speak about today continues to promote the legacy of that man whose commitment to public service and abiding dedication to promoting equality and justice for all people inspired this memorial lecture and the conference that will follow. I thank Judge Olmos' widow Mary Louise's family, her son and the judge's many friends for hosting me. And for the privilege you have bestowed on me in honoring the memory of a very special person. If I and the many people of this conference can accomplish a fraction of what Judge Olmos did in his short but extraordinary life we and our respective communities will be infinitely better.

I intend tonight to touch upon the themes that this conference will be discussing this weekend and to talk to you about my Latina identity, where it came from, and the influence I perceive it has on my presence on the bench.

Who am I? I am a "Newyorkrican." For those of you on the West Coast who do not know what that term means: I am a born and bred New Yorker of Puerto Rican-born parents who came to the states during World War II.

Like many other immigrants to this great land, my parents came because of poverty and to attempt to find and secure a better life for themselves and the family that they hoped to have. They largely succeeded. For that, my brother and I are very grateful. The story of that success is what made me and what makes me the Latina that I am. The Latina side of my identity was forged and closely nurtured by my family through our shared experiences and traditions.

For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir - rice, beans and pork - that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events. My Latina identity also includes, because of my particularly adventurous taste buds, morcilla, -- pig intestines, patitas de cerdo con garbanzo -- pigs' feet with beans, and la lengua y orejas de cuchifrito, pigs' tongue and ears. I bet the Mexican-Americans in this room are thinking that Puerto Ricans have unusual food tastes. Some of us, like me, do. Part of my Latina identity is the sound of merengue at all our family parties and the heart wrenching Spanish love songs that we enjoy. It is the memory of Saturday afternoon at the movies with my aunt and cousins watching Cantinflas, who is not Puerto Rican, but who was an icon Spanish comedian on par with Abbot and Costello of my generation. My Latina soul was nourished as I visited and played at my grandmother's house with my cousins and extended family. They were my friends as I grew up. Being a Latina child was watching the adults playing dominos on Saturday night and us kids playing lotería, bingo, with my grandmother calling out the numbers which we marked on our cards with chick peas.

Now, does any one of these things make me a Latina? Obviously not because each of our Caribbean and Latin American communities has their own unique food and different traditions at the holidays. I only learned about tacos in college from my Mexican-American roommate. Being a Latina in America also does not mean speaking Spanish. I happen to speak it fairly well. But my brother, only three years younger, like too many of us educated here, barely speaks it. Most of us born and bred here, speak it very poorly.

If I had pursued my career in my undergraduate history major, I would likely provide you with a very academic description of what being a Latino or Latina means. For example, I could define Latinos as those peoples and cultures populated or colonized by Spain who maintained or adopted Spanish or Spanish Creole as their language of communication. You can tell that I have been very well educated. That antiseptic description however, does not really explain the appeal of morcilla - pig's intestine - to an American born child. It does not provide an adequate explanation of why individuals like us, many of whom are born in this completely different American culture, still identify so strongly with those communities in which our parents were born and raised.

America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension. We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore these very differences that in other contexts we laud. That tension between "the melting pot and the salad bowl" -- a recently popular metaphor used to described New York's diversity - is being hotly debated today in national discussions about affirmative action. Many of us struggle with this tension and attempt to maintain and promote our cultural and ethnic identities in a society that is often ambivalent about how to deal with its differences. In this time of great debate we must remember that it is not political struggles that create a Latino or Latina identity. I became a Latina by the way I love and the way I live my life. My family showed me by their example how wonderful and vibrant life is and how wonderful and magical it is to have a Latina soul. They taught me to love being a Puerto Riqueña and to love America and value its lesson that great things could be achieved if one works hard for it. But achieving success here is no easy accomplishment for Latinos or Latinas, and although that struggle did not and does not create a Latina identity, it does inspire how I live my life.

I was born in the year 1954. That year was the fateful year in which Brown v. Board of Education was decided. When I was eight, in 1961, the first Latino, the wonderful Judge Reynaldo Garza, was appointed to the federal bench, an event we are celebrating at this conference. When I finished law school in 1979, there were no women judges on the Supreme Court or on the highest court of my home state, New York. There was then only one Afro-American Supreme Court Justice and then and now no Latino or Latina justices on our highest court. Now in the last twenty plus years of my professional life, I have seen a quantum leap in the representation of women and Latinos in the legal profession and particularly in the judiciary. In addition to the appointment of the first female United States Attorney General, Janet Reno, we have seen the appointment of two female justices to the Supreme Court and two female justices to the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court of my home state. One of those judges is the Chief Judge and the other is a Puerto Riqueña, like I am. As of today, women sit on the highest courts of almost all of the states and of the territories, including Puerto Rico. One Supreme Court, that of Minnesota, had a majority of women justices for a period of time.

As of September 1, 2001, the federal judiciary consisting of Supreme, Circuit and District Court Judges was about 22% women. In 1992, nearly ten years ago, when I was first appointed a District Court Judge, the percentage of women in the total federal judiciary was only 13%. Now, the growth of Latino representation is somewhat less favorable. As of today we have, as I noted earlier, no Supreme Court justices, and we have only 10 out of 147 active Circuit Court judges and 30 out of 587 active district court judges. Those numbers are grossly below our proportion of the population. As recently as 1965, however, the federal bench had only three women serving and only one Latino judge. So changes are happening, although in some areas, very slowly. These figures and appointments are heartwarming. Nevertheless, much still remains to happen.

Continued....

Defender968

06-04-2009, 18:41

Sort of shocking, isn't it? This is the year 2002. We have a long way to go. Unfortunately, there are some very deep storm warnings we must keep in mind. In at least the last five years the majority of nominated judges the Senate delayed more than one year before confirming or never confirming were women or minorities. I need not remind this audience that Judge Paez of your home Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, has had the dubious distinction of having had his confirmation delayed the longest in Senate history. These figures demonstrate that there is a real and continuing need for Latino and Latina organizations and community groups throughout the country to exist and to continue their efforts of promoting women and men of all colors in their pursuit for equality in the judicial system.

This weekend's conference, illustrated by its name, is bound to examine issues that I hope will identify the efforts and solutions that will assist our communities. The focus of my speech tonight, however, is not about the struggle to get us where we are and where we need to go but instead to discuss with you what it all will mean to have more women and people of color on the bench. The statistics I have been talking about provide a base from which to discuss a question which one of my former colleagues on the Southern District bench, Judge Miriam Cederbaum, raised when speaking about women on the federal bench. Her question was: What do the history and statistics mean? In her speech, Judge Cederbaum expressed her belief that the number of women and by direct inference people of color on the bench, was still statistically insignificant and that therefore we could not draw valid scientific conclusions from the acts of so few people over such a short period of time. Yet, we do have women and people of color in more significant numbers on the bench and no one can or should ignore pondering what that will mean or not mean in the development of the law. Now, I cannot and do not claim this issue as personally my own. In recent years there has been an explosion of research and writing in this area. On one of the panels tomorrow, you will hear the Latino perspective in this debate.

For those of you interested in the gender perspective on this issue, I commend to you a wonderful compilation of articles published on the subject in Vol. 77 of the Judicature, the Journal of the American Judicature Society of November-December 1993. It is on Westlaw/Lexis and I assume the students and academics in this room can find it.

Now Judge Cedarbaum expresses concern with any analysis of women and presumably again people of color on the bench, which begins and presumably ends with the conclusion that women or minorities are different from men generally. She sees danger in presuming that judging should be gender or anything else based. She rightly points out that the perception of the differences between men and women is what led to many paternalistic laws and to the denial to women of the right to vote because we were described then "as not capable of reasoning or thinking logically" but instead of "acting intuitively." I am quoting adjectives that were bandied around famously during the suffragettes' movement.

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. Whatever the reasons why we may have different perspectives, either as some theorists suggest because of our cultural experiences or as others postulate because we have basic differences in logic and reasoning, are in many respects a small part of a larger practical question we as women and minority judges in society in general must address. 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. Thus, as noted by another Yale Law School Professor -- I did graduate from there and I am not really biased except that they seem to be doing a lot of writing in that area -- Professor Judith Resnik says that there is not a single voice of feminism, not a feminist approach but many who are exploring the possible ways of being that are distinct from those structured in a world dominated by the power and words of men. Thus, feminist theories of judging are in the midst of creation and are not and perhaps will never aspire to be as solidified as the established legal doctrines of judging can sometimes appear to be.

That same point can be made with respect to people of color. No one person, judge or nominee will speak in a female or people of color voice. I need not remind you that Justice Clarence Thomas represents a part but not the whole of African-American thought on many subjects. 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 development of the law and on judging.
In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.

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.

Continued....

Defender968

06-04-2009, 18:44

Continued.

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.

There is always a danger embedded in relative morality, but since judging is a series of choices that we must make, that I am forced to make, I hope that I can make them by informing myself on the questions I must not avoid asking and continuously pondering. We, I mean all of us in this room, must continue individually and in voices united in organizations that have supported this conference, to think about these questions and to figure out how we go about creating the opportunity for there to be more women and people of color on the bench so we can finally have statistically significant numbers to measure the differences we will and are making.

I am delighted to have been here tonight and extend once again my deepest gratitude to all of you for listening and letting me share my reflections on being a Latina voice on the bench. Thank you.

Counsel

06-05-2009, 09:43

Presenting a speech lauding your ethnicity as rendering you capable of better legal decisions than someone of another race is, in fact arrogant AND racist. I am sure that it played well in San Juan and certain parts of the Northeast. IMHO, it disqualifies you from sitting on the highest court in this land as an impartial jurist, just as it would David Duke. As a petitioner to the court, I would have to wonder if I would be treated the same by Ms. Sotomayor as if I were a Hispanic female? The question has to be asked now.

I would offer this. I haven’t read the speech that reference to, but I trust you did. If in fact the speech (which I think was given 5 years ago) or at least the prevailing theme of the speech was how her ethnicity (not upbringing) qualifies her better to be a Judge as opposed to any other ethnicity then the Senate has to do its job and look for that in her decisions. A racist is a racist as a whole, not 50% not 25% but a 100% and that will most certainly filtrate to her writings. And I agree, there is no place for such a person in the SC. But one must go to the merits of the nominee by evaluating her work as a whole, not merely a speech given some years ago.

And I must add, why do you presume that said statement played well in San Juan and other parts of the Northeast? Actually, I haven’t seen here any public figures agreeing with her statements much less applauding here. Maybe you know something I don’t.

Pete

06-05-2009, 10:34

......... Actually, I haven’t seen here any public figures agreeing with her statements much less applauding here. Maybe you know something I don’t.

I'm getting the idea you don't spend a lot of time viewing the national news.

And it would appear that it was not once, not twice but a number of times she talked with a similar tilt.

http://www.slate.com/id/2219699/#sb2219710

Razor

06-05-2009, 11:01

A racist is a racist as a whole, not 50% not 25% but a 100% ...But one must go to the merits of the nominee by evaluating her work as a whole, not merely a speech given some years ago.

Is the CT firefighter exam case recent enough?

The Reaper

06-05-2009, 16:47

I would offer this. I haven’t read the speech that reference to, but I trust you did. If in fact the speech (which I think was given 5 years ago) or at least the prevailing theme of the speech was how her ethnicity (not upbringing) qualifies her better to be a Judge as opposed to any other ethnicity then the Senate has to do its job and look for that in her decisions. A racist is a racist as a whole, not 50% not 25% but a 100% and that will most certainly filtrate to her writings. And I agree, there is no place for such a person in the SC. But one must go to the merits of the nominee by evaluating her work as a whole, not merely a speech given some years ago.

And I must add, why do you presume that said statement played well in San Juan and other parts of the Northeast? Actually, I haven’t seen here any public figures agreeing with her statements much less applauding here. Maybe you know something I don’t.

Both David Duke and George Wallace claimed to have rehabilitated themselves and to no longer embrace racism.

They seem to have strongly felt previously that a white man could make better decisions than a minority or a female.

How long a period without demonstrated racism would be adequate before you would consider them for positions on the SCOTUS?

I looked at a couple of the papers from PR and they seemed pretty happy with the nomination, as did the NYT and the New England Congresscritters. Given the complete lack of conservative representation from those deep blue areas, and few elected Republicans as well, this would seem to be strong support in that part of the country, with the possible exception of the firefighters she ruled that it was okay to discriminate against.

TR

Sigaba

06-07-2009, 13:28

Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/us/politics/07affirm.html?ref=politics&pagewanted=print). (Yes, I'm aware of the irony. I grouse constantly about the Grey Lady and continue to use her as a news source.)

June 7, 2009
For Sotomayor and Thomas, Paths Diverge at Race
By JODI KANTOR and DAVID GONZALEZ

If Judge Sonia Sotomayor joins Justice Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court, they may find that they have far more than a job title in common.

Both come from the humblest of beginnings. Both were members of the first sizable generation of minority students at elite colleges and then Yale Law School. Both benefited from affirmative action policies.

But that is where their similarities end, and their disagreements begin. For the first time, the Supreme Court would include two minority judges, but ones who stand at opposite poles of thinking about race, identity and opportunity. Judge Sotomayor and Justice Thomas have walked parallel paths and yet arrived at contrary conclusions, not only on legal questions, but on personal ones, too.

Judge Sotomayor celebrates being Latina, calling it a reason for her success; Justice Thomas bristles at attempts to define him by race and says he has succeeded despite the obstacles it posed. Being a woman of Puerto Rican descent is rich and fulfilling, Judge Sotomayor says, while Justice Thomas calls being a black man in America a largely searing experience. Off the bench, Judge Sotomayor has helped build affirmative action programs. On the bench, Justice Thomas has argued against them with thunderous force.

The two may sit together on a court that is struggling over whether race and ethnicity should be a factor in legal thinking, each pitting his or her hard-won lessons against the other’s. Both judges are passionate about minority success, dedicating countless hours to mentorship. But Judge Sotomayor sees herself as the successful product of diversity initiatives, whereas Justice Thomas, who thinks of himself as a scarred survivor of those efforts, believes they often backfire.

The two judges have lived, not just argued, the strongest cases for and against affirmative action, said Barry Friedman, a law professor at New York University. With both on the court, he said, “their voices are going to come to exemplify the contending positions.”

When Ms. Sotomayor and Mr. Thomas arrived at college — she at Princeton in 1972, he at Holy Cross in 1968 — they worried about the same thing: what others would think when they opened their mouths.

Ms. Sotomayor had grown up in the Bronx speaking Spanish; Mr. Thomas’s relatives in Pin Point, Ga., mixed English with Gullah, a language of the coastal South. Both attended Catholic school, where they were drilled by nuns in grammar and other subjects. But at college, they realized they still sounded unpolished.

Ms. Sotomayor shut herself in her dorm room and eventually resorted to grade-school grammar textbooks to relearn her syntax. Mr. Thomas barely spoke, he said later, and majored in English literature to conquer the language.

“I just worked at it,” he said in an interview years later, “on my pronunciations, sounding out words.”

For many East Coast colleges, it was a new era. After the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, Holy Cross pledged to do its part in the civil rights movement by recruiting black students; just a few months later, Mr. Thomas became one of six in his freshman class.

Princeton was integrating not only by race and ethnicity, but also by gender. Ms. Sotomayor was one of 20 Hispanics in her class, students estimate. Princeton had admitted women just a few years earlier, and “husband-hunters,” as one of the alumni still campaigning against their presence called them, were vastly outnumbered at the college.

When the students arrived, they were subject to constant suspicion that they had not earned their slots. “It was a question echoed over and over again, not only verbally but in people’s thoughts,” said Franklin Moore, a former Princeton administrator. Ms. Sotomayor and Mr. Thomas, honors students in high school, considered themselves qualified. But to prove their critics wrong, they studied with special determination.

“We can’t let these people think we just came off the street without anything to offer Princeton,” said Eneida Rosa, another member of the Hispanic contingent, describing how seriously she and Ms. Sotomayor took their studies.

The two future judges led similar student organizations — Mr. Thomas helped found a black student group, while Ms. Sotomayor was co-chairwoman of a Puerto Rican one — and shared the same liberal politics. They graduated at the top of their classes. And afterward, they each headed to Yale Law School.

Interpretations

But perhaps because of their backgrounds, Judge Sotomayor and Justice Thomas came to view their campus experiences in very different ways.

Even by the standards of the Jim Crow South, Mr. Thomas’s childhood was marked by bitter blows and isolation. He was taunted not only by classmates at his all-white high school but also by blacks, who called him “ABC,” for “America’s Blackest Child,” on account of his dark skin. A black among Catholics and a Catholic among blacks, he sometimes seemed to fit in nowhere at all.

Mr. Thomas learned he could rely only on himself. His father left when he was a toddler. A few years later, his mother sent him to live with his grandparents, dumping his possessions in grocery bags and sending him out the front door, he wrote in his autobiography, “My Grandfather’s Son.”

Ms. Sotomayor also grew up without a father; hers died of heart problems when she was 9. But her mother was a sustaining force, supporting the family by working as a nurse. In a recent speech, Judge Sotomayor recalled her mother and grandmother chatting and chopping ingredients for dinner. “I can’t describe to you the warmth of that moment for a child,” she said.

In New York, Puerto Ricans were pitied for poverty and blamed for crime. Popular images were dominated by the gangs of “West Side Story” and bumbling comics with broken English. According to friends, Ms. Sotomayor was not active in her high school’s small Latino club. Ethnicity was not something to be ashamed of, they said, but they did not really celebrate it either.

But on Princeton’s manicured campus, Ms. Sotomayor explored her roots in a way she never had on trips to Puerto Rico or in “Nuyorican” circles back home. In a Puerto Rican studies seminar, she absorbed the literature, economics, history and politics of the island, and by senior year, she was writing a thesis on its first democratically elected governor. In its dedication, she sounds newly enchanted with her heritage.

“To my family,” she wrote, “for you have given me my Puerto Rican-ness.”

“To the people of my island, for the rich history that is mine,” she continued.

[Continued below]

Sigaba

06-07-2009, 13:45

[Continued from above]

Back to Their Roots

Ms. Sotomayor was not alone; for many minority students who arrived at elite colleges, the first thing they wanted to study was their own backgrounds. “What we did on campus was to use its resources to understand ourselves in a larger context,” said Eduardo Padro, a New York State Supreme Court justice who was raised in East Harlem and arrived at Yale in 1971, part of the first group of working-class Puerto Ricans there.

Ms. Sotomayor also became a passionate advocate for Hispanic recruitment. She took a work-study job in the admissions office, traveling to high schools and lobbying on behalf of her best prospects. As co-chairwoman of Accíon Puertorriqueña, she wrote a complaint accusing Princeton of discrimination, convinced the leaders of the Chicano Caucus to co-sign it and filed it with the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

But Ms. Sotomayor was no campus radical. She was more likely to mete out discipline than to be subjected to it: in an early turn at judgeship, she sat on a panel that ruled on student infractions.

William Bowen, Princeton’s president at the time, recalled in an interview that he used to call her for advice on Hispanic issues. After all, the university’s leadership wanted to make it more diverse, and Ms. Sotomayor’s activism helped them make their case. As a result of her efforts, other students said, Princeton hired its first Hispanic administrator and invited a Puerto Rican professor to teach.

While Ms. Sotomayor embraced her ethnicity in college and helped bring more Hispanics to campus, Mr. Thomas began to worry about the consequences of racial categorizations and grew skeptical of Holy Cross’s efforts to enroll blacks.

He flirted a bit with black nationalism, reading Malcolm X’s autobiography until the pages were worn. He drank in Ayn Rand’s ideas about individualism. He identified with the protagonists of Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison novels, whose destinies were determined by racial stereotypes.

“I began to think of myself as a man without a country,” he wrote in his autobiography about his increasing alienation.

Some of his black classmates were losing their way, failing classes or falling into drug use, and he began to think of the college’s recruitment efforts as misguided. In his autobiography, he wrote of “these gifted young people being sacrificed on the altar of an abstract theory of social justice.”

Ms. Sotomayor and Mr. Thomas missed each other at Yale by only a few years, but they might as well have studied at entirely different institutions.

Given her standout record at Princeton, said James A. Thomas, a former dean of admissions, Ms. Sotomayor’s background had little role in her acceptance to the school. Again, she immersed herself in Puerto Rican issues, winning a spot on the law review with an article about Puerto Rico’s rights to resources in its seabed, leading the minority students’ association and urging the administration to hire a tenured Hispanic faculty member. (A quarter-century later, she is still pressing the school on the issue.)

Mr. Thomas, though, felt out of place from the moment he arrived and only became more disaffected. He had listed his race on his application and later felt haunted by the decision.

“I was among the elite, and I knew that no amount of striving could make me one of them,” he wrote. He ran into financial troubles and applied for scholarship money from a wealthy Yale family, a process he found humiliating. Friends recall that he insisted on dressing like a field hand, in overalls and a hat.

Shared Rejection

Mr. Thomas and Ms. Sotomayor did have one experience in common: law firm interviewers asked them if they really deserved their slots at Yale, implying that they might not have been accepted if they were white.

Ms. Sotomayor fought back so intensely — against a Washington firm, now merged with another — that she surprised even some of the school’s Hispanics. She filed a complaint with a faculty-student panel, which rejected the firm’s initial letter of apology and asked for a stronger one. Minority and women’s groups covered campus with fliers supporting her. Ms. Sotomayor eventually dropped her complaint, but the firm had already suffered a blow to its reputation.

Mr. Thomas was more private about the experience — even some friends do not recall it — but he took it hard. With rejection letters piling up, he feared he would not be able to support his wife and young son.

The problem, Mr. Thomas concluded, was affirmative action. Whites would not hire him, he concluded, because no one believed he had attended Yale on his own merits. He felt acute betrayal: his education was supposed to put him on equal footing, but he was not offered the jobs that his white classmates were getting. He saved the pile of rejection letters, he said in a speech years later.

“It was futile for me to suppose that I could escape the stigmatizing effects of racial preference,” he wrote in his autobiography.

From Yale, Mr. Thomas and Ms. Sotomayor took what seemed like entirely different paths: he as a Reagan official who helped dismantle affirmative action programs; she as a prosecutor and litigator.

But once in a while, their stories have converged. In their nominations to the Supreme Court, both were presented as barrier-breaking success stories. Both have seen those nominations become bogged down in debates about race and ethnicity.

And at times, each of them has viewed opposition to their confirmations in racial or ethnic terms. When Democrats opposed Justice Thomas’s nomination because of sexual harassment accusations, he called it a “high-tech lynching,” a triumph of stereotype.

Judge Sotomayor saw a hitch in her own confirmation for the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in a not entirely dissimilar light. Senate Republicans had held up her nomination for a year, and shortly afterward, she said they made assumptions about her views simply “because I was Hispanic and a woman.”

“I was dealt with on the basis of stereotypes,” she said.

David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting, and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Two issues that will never be addressed in a political arena (and rightly so) but worthy of inquiry nonetheless are:

How cultural conventions centering around notions of physical beauty may have shaped Ms. Sotomayor's senses of identity, her view, her education, and her career.
How coming of age in the Bronx during the formative years of hip-hop culture may have shaped her cognitive style, her rhetoric, her view of American society, and her approach to jurisprudence. Long before hip-hop was appropriated by those who would have the world believe that it was created by African-Americans alone, residents of the Bronx were finding ways to reject the hedonism and the nihilistic materialism of the 1970s and to reconfigure the American dream through the beats, the rhymes, the blasts (graffiti murals), and the breaks.

Sigaba

06-08-2009, 14:03

Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/06/08/us/AP-US-Sotomayor-Injury.html?hp=&pagewanted=print).

A photo here (http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/06/08/us/sotomayor.650.2.jpg).

June 8, 2009
Sotomayor Fractures Ankle at Airport
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 3:05 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor broke her ankle Monday morning in an airport stumble, then boarded her flight as scheduled and made the roughly hourlong trip to Washington to meet with senators who will vote on her confirmation.

The federal judge, who has been keeping up a busy set of appointments on Capitol Hill, tripped at New York's LaGuardia Airport and suffered a small fracture to her right ankle, the White House said.

She was keeping her six appointments with senators despite the injury. She entered the Capitol for a meeting with Sen. Charles E. Grassley, R-Iowa, on crutches, wearing a white cast covered at the foot with a black soft bootie. Asked how she was feeling, Sotomayor said, ''I feel fine, thank you.''

Sotomayor has set a relentless pace since her Capitol Hill debut last week. By day's end Monday, she will have met with one-third of the Senate in just four days of visits.

The White House is pressing for her quick confirmation, and Sotomayor wasn't pausing much for distractions, even her own trip-up. She even stopped at the White House Monday after her arrival in Washington, before heading to a local medical office for an X-ray.

The George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates treated and released her, according to a White House statement.

Sotomayor drew praise Monday former first lady Laura Bush, who said she was pleased President Barack Obama nominated a woman for the Supreme Court.

''I think she sounds like a very interesting and good nominee,'' Bush said of Sotomayor. She said on ABC's ''Good Morning America'' that, ''as a woman, I'm proud that there might be another woman on the court. I wish her well.''
The potential for faux photo captions (playful or snarky) is huge. Don't let QP Dozer get started on the puns!:D

On a more serious note, Ms. Sotomayor's approach to her physical health might be discussed with great sensitivity and equal intensity. Type I diabetes should not disqualify a qualified candidate for any position from serious consideration. At the same time, all parties need to make sure that the candidate is committed to managing her condition responsibly.

Counsel

06-08-2009, 14:04

Both David Duke and George Wallace claimed to have rehabilitated themselves and to no longer embrace racism.

They seem to have strongly felt previously that a white man could make better decisions than a minority or a female.

How long a period without demonstrated racism would be adequate before you would consider them for positions on the SCOTUS?

I looked at a couple of the papers from PR and they seemed pretty happy with the nomination, as did the NYT and the New England Congresscritters. Given the complete lack of conservative representation from those deep blue areas, and few elected Republicans as well, this would seem to be strong support in that part of the country, with the possible exception of the firefighters she ruled that it was okay to discriminate against.

TR

The point I am trying to make is that one arguably racist and incorrect comment does not make you a racist. However, if in fact she is it will be know through here decisions (writings). One more thing, if in fact she is a racist I would hope that people that have come across this or have proof of that come forward because this is way to important to let pass.

The media here is just as liberal and as unreliable as in the states. But our Governor, Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate are all conservatives.

Pete

06-08-2009, 14:19

...am trying to make is that one arguably racist and incorrect comment does not make you a racist. .....

Still sticking with "One" I see.

Richard

06-08-2009, 14:53

Newspapers write about SC-nominee Sonia Sotomayor, if confirmed, being the nation's first Hispanic justice.

But Sotomayor refers to herself as a Latina judge.

Maybe this clear as mud explanation of what 'is' means will help for those who merely refer to themselves as Americans.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Do Hispanic and Latina mean the same thing?

Not exactly. Hispanic is an English word that originally referred to people from Spain and eventually expanded to include the populations of its colonies in South and Central America. Latino is a Spanish word – hence the feminine form Latina – that refers to people with roots in Latin America and generally excludes the Iberian Peninsula. For many, Hispanic has negative connotations because of its Eurocentrism. Others prefer it because it's gender-neutral. Latino, meanwhile, is perceived as a more authentic-sounding, Spanish-language alternative. Generally speaking, Democrats use Latino more often than Republicans, who favor Hispanic.

For years, Spanish-speaking people in the U.S. were identified according to their ancestral nationality. In the 1970 U.S. census, for example, people were asked whether they were Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Central or South American, or "other Spanish." The word Hispanic was not used until the 1980 census, after the Office of Management and Budget imposed rules standardizing ethnicity statistics. In 1997, the OMB changed its classification to "Hispanic or Latino," explaining that "Hispanic is commonly used in the eastern portion of the United States, whereas Latino is commonly used in the western portion."

Some commentators have wondered whether Sotomayor would really be the first Hispanic justice. After all, Benjamin Cardozo, who was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1932, had family who originated in Portugal. But most Portuguese speakers – whether from Portugal or Brazil – do not consider themselves Hispanic or Latino. Furthermore, Cardozo identified as a Sephardic Jew. That said, former Rep. Tony Coelho and Rep. Dennis Cardoza, both of whom have roots in Portugal, have been members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Ultimately, there is no strict definition of Hispanic or Latino. The College Board, which administers the SAT, leaves it up to the student to self-identify. The U.S. Census Bureau makes no distinction between the two terms. It defines Hispanics and Latinos as "persons who trace their origin or descent to Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Spanish-speaking Central and South America countries, and other Spanish cultures." But if someone from Brazil says he's Hispanic, the census doesn't say, No, you're not .

Christopher Beam, Slate

Defender968

06-08-2009, 15:41

The point I am trying to make is that one arguably racist and incorrect comment does not make you a racist. However, if in fact she is it will be know through here decisions (writings). One more thing, if in fact she is a racist I would hope that people that have come across this or have proof of that come forward because this is way to important to let pass.

The media here is just as liberal and as unreliable as in the states. But our Governor, Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate are all conservatives.

Counsel I would absolutely agree with you that one statement does not a racist make, the first problem I see however is it appears you're backing her without looking into her past, why because the one said so? Have you checked her out? The reason I ask is you keep making statements that have already been answered, so it appears to me that you're just nodding at the presidents waving hand without actually finding out the facts for yourself, "this is the judge we want.....er......these are not the droids you are looking for" :D

Let me ask you this, what would it take for you to believe she is biased? I would argue there is nothing that will if what has been presented doesn't already. I would further allege that many people and if the shoe doesn't fit don't wear it, but many as Pete pointed out are still just drinking the cool aide and aren't questioning anything the one does, and it certainly appears to me that you fall into this category.

My second problem with what you said is that the fact is she has been making these statements for years. According to her own backers she has been making these or similar claims as far back as 1994. Her backers according to CNN, (and we know how conservative that organization is :rolleyes:) claim she made the same or very similar statements in speeches in 94. If you dig a little deeper it would appear she also made them in, 1999, and several times in 2000 at Yale, and in 2001 at Berkley. Her backers are saying well yes she said that but the first Bush was ok with it so it must not be that big a deal. The Wall street journal also wrote a similar story on her speeches. I've personally read the whole 94 speech. I've further watched her via youtube talk about making law from the bench, so I'm not just taking their word for it, are you doing the same?

So now we have a history of bias against one race, an affinity for another, and her own acknowledgement of creating law from the bench, what else do you need to know she should not be allowed to sit on the SCOTUS? The law is the law, judges are not there to change it or make it, they are simply there to interpret it with regards to a specific case, not to impose what they think or would like to see the law say on a specific case.

I'd also like to pose another question to you, because I didn't call you on it earlier, you said that she was upholding the law of New York with her ruling on the firefighters. I'd like to know specifically what law allows you to legally discriminate against a race of people, because while I'm not a lawyer the last time I had a business law class the Federal employment law stated basically that you could not discriminate against a person for employment decisions on the basis of race, religion, national origin, etc.

Sigaba

06-08-2009, 16:19

Ms. Sotomayor said (source is here (http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/05/26_sotomayor.shtml)):

If I had pursued my career in my undergraduate history major, I would likely provide you with a very academic description of what being a Latino or Latina means. For example, I could define Latinos as those peoples and cultures populated or colonized by Spain who maintained or adopted Spanish or Spanish Creole as their language of communication. You can tell that I have been very well educated. That antiseptic description however, does not really explain the appeal of morcilla - pig's intestine - to an American born child. It does not provide an adequate explanation of why individuals like us, many of whom are born in this completely different American culture, still identify so strongly with those communities in which our parents were born and raised.

America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension. We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore these very differences that in other contexts we laud. That tension between "the melting pot and the salad bowl" -- a recently popular metaphor used to described New York's diversity - is being hotly debated today in national discussions about affirmative action. Many of us struggle with this tension and attempt to maintain and promote our cultural and ethnic identities in a society that is often ambivalent about how to deal with its differences. In this time of great debate we must remember that it is not political struggles that create a Latino or Latina identity. I became a Latina by the way I love and the way I live my life. My family showed me by their example how wonderful and vibrant life is and how wonderful and magical it is to have a Latina soul. They taught me to love being a Puerto Riqueña and to love America and value its lesson that great things could be achieved if one works hard for it. But achieving success here is no easy accomplishment for Latinos or Latinas, and although that struggle did not and does not create a Latina identity, it does inspire how I live my life.
If the Republican members of the senate judiciary committee insist on making Ms. Sotomayor's confirmation hearings about her views on identify and race, I sure hope they:

Have a group discount for moving supplies because if they mismanage the hearings the way they've bungled this conversation so far, then even more members of the GOP will be leaving Washington D.C. in 2010.
Bring a lunch. She is going to eat them alive.

In a public debate over "meta-narratives" (and this is what this is about) one needs to bring something to the discussion a lot more potent than sound bites, especially when those sound bites invite questions like "Well, what is your view on the entire speech?"

The Democrats' treatment of both Senator Clinton and Governor Palin gave to the GOP an opportunity that can still be turned into an advantage. Will the Republicans throw away that opportunity by behaving badly in a political contest they cannot win?

By all means, go after Ms. Sotomayor as a jurist tooth and nail. Drop libraries on her. Throw legal citations at her that make deceased members of The Brethren cry out from their graves and servers crash as observers try to keep up.

Do not go any deeper into the discussion about identity and race. It is a trap.

CRad

06-08-2009, 18:37

Whats the first day of Hunting season in Nebraska being a Holiday have to do with the second Amendment?
We are are not talking about Hand Gun Permits or CCW laws. Its about States being allowed to completely take away rights and protection granted by the constitution. Not allowing law abiding Citizens to protect themselves better serves the interest of what State?
According to you it would be OK if Texas decided Police don't need PC to search homes, Cars and arrest people (no offense to you Texans out there)

Both you and Reaper misunderstood. I think States have the right to make laws that the Federal Gov't should leave alone.

What I said was "What works for Washington DC does not always suit the interests of Washington, NC. "

Therefore what works in DC does not work in NC.

States cannot take away federally constituted rights. Federal law supercedes State law BUT! Federal law needs to consider the state and its needs regarding the law.

Sigaba

06-09-2009, 04:25

Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/09/us/politics/09ivy.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print).

June 9, 2009
An Ivy-Covered Path to the Supreme Court
By JOHN SCHWARTZ

President Obama may have broken with history by nominating a Latina to the Supreme Court, but in another respect he followed the path of almost every president in modern times who has successfully placed a justice: he chose a nominee groomed in an Ivy League university.

If confirmed, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who attended Princeton University and Yale Law School, would sit alongside seven other Ivy League graduates on the court. Only Justice John Paul Stevens provides a measure of non-Ivy diversity, having graduated from the University of Chicago and the Northwestern University School of Law.

In the history of the court, half of the 110 justices were undergraduates, graduate students or law students in the Ivy League; since 1950, the percentage is 70. From the beginning of the 20th century, every president who has seated a justice has picked at least one Ivy graduate. Four of the six justices on President Obama’s short list studied at Ivy League institutions, either as undergraduates or law students.

Whatever a nominee’s origins might be, does attending the same institutions shape them and their views, even subtly? Critics suggest that elite universities shave off the differences in backgrounds and contribute to a kind of high-level groupthink.

“There is both a funneling and homogenizing effect from these schools,” said G. William Domhoff, a professor of psychology and sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of “Who Rules America?”

The effect, Professor Domhoff said, “plays out in terms of social networks, cultural/social capital, and a feeling of being part of the in-group.” It is one of subtle conditioning — what Sam Rayburn, the former House speaker, meant when he famously said, “If you want to get along, go along.”

Even those who might not agree with Professor Domhoff’s political critique would like to see more educational variety on the Supreme Court. Limiting the universe of nominees largely to Ivy League graduates “is not good for the court or the country,” said Linda L. Addison, the partner in charge of the New York office of Fulbright & Jaworski. “Educational diversity would strengthen the court, as have racial, ethnic, gender and religious diversity.”

Ms. Addison, who has served on the University of Texas Law School Foundation and is a graduate of the school, acknowledged that Judge Sotomayor’s credentials and qualifications were impressive. But, she added, “In the future, I also would love to see a nominee from a first-rate public law school.”

Beyond the high quality of the Ivy League schools, of course, there are important reasons presidents tend to choose their graduates. One is the public guarantee that they have selected a certified high achiever.

“Perceptions of qualifications really matter in this game,” said Lee Epstein, a law professor at Northwestern who maintains a database of the justices’ characteristics. In choosing an Ivy Leaguer, Professor Epstein said, a president might think: “I don’t have to think too much. I don’t have to dig too deeply about whether they’re smart or not, whether they are well trained.”

The lack of a top-tier law degree can become a basis for attacking a nominee. When President George W. Bush nominated Harriet E. Miers to succeed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, one of the points hammered by her conservative opponents was that she had attended the Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University.

A president who attended a top university might gravitate toward those with a similar education. Stanley Aronowitz, a professor of sociology at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York, said the selection of Judge Sotomayor by a president who graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law was an example of “people wanting to appoint themselves.”

Professor Aronowitz, who has written extensively on questions of power, higher education and class, jokingly said, “What I think he means by ‘diversity’ is Yale, Harvard, Princeton and Columbia.”

Defenders of such appointments say the notion of a homogenous set of graduates from elite universities is an overblown myth. William G. Bowen, a former president of Princeton, said the cookie-cutter accusation missed the role of a student’s character.

“They come out as very different human beings, even though they came through a similar process,” Mr. Bowen said. “What you hope these people have in common is discipline, and the ability to lead from assumptions to analysis to conclusions. But that is not to say that they’re going to use the same analysis, or come to the same conclusions.”

Edward B. Fiske, who publishes a leading college guide, pointed out that although John Kerry and George W. Bush attended Yale at about the same time, “you’d never know they went to the same school.” And while Judge Sotomayor graduated from the same law school as Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., they appear to occupy different parts of the political spectrum.

Calvin Trillin, a journalist and author who has written about his experiences as a Midwesterner attending Yale in the 1950s, said, “I’m not bothered by the fact that nine out of nine, or six out of nine, went to Ivy League law schools,” because the institutions have grown more diverse. “These places have become, themselves, much more like the country,” Mr. Trillin said.

The court’s ties to elite institutions go back through the nation’s history, Professor Epstein said. Among the first on the court were John Jay (King’s College, the future Columbia) and William Cushing (Harvard). Of the nation’s 110 justices, 18 went to Harvard Law, 8 to Yale Law, and 6 to Columbia. (The largest plurality of justices over all, 44, attended no law school, since one could practice law in early days without a degree.)

Some justices proudly perpetuate the idea that the right school is an essential credential. In April, after a talk at the American University Washington College of Law, Justice Antonin Scalia (Georgetown and Harvard Law) told a student how he chose his clerks: “From the law schools that basically are the hardest to get into. They admit the best and the brightest, and they may not teach very well, but you can’t make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse. If they come in the best and the brightest, they’re probably going to leave the best and the brightest.”

And trying to defend a candidate who does not bear the imprimatur of an Ivy League diploma can be a losing battle, leading to comments like the famous defense of G. Harrold Carswell (Walter F. George School of Law of Mercer University) by Senator Roman L. Hruska: “Even if he is mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance?”

A biographical sketch of Professor Domhoff is available here (http://psych.ucsc.edu/dreams/About/bill.html).

Ms. Addison's paean to herself is here (http://www.fulbright.com/laddison).

And I thought I was (not) bitter about not going to Yale.:rolleyes:

Razor

06-09-2009, 11:09

You can tell that I have been very well educated. That antiseptic description however, does not really explain the appeal of morcilla - pig's intestine - to an American born child.

Apparently Judge Sotomayor's superior education didn't include a familirarity with chitlins or blutwurst, both made with pig intestines, which many millions of "American-born" children possibly find just as appealing as morcilla. I suppose under her school of thought, my affinity for creton, tarte au sucre and soupe aux pois give me special insight into being compassionate and better suited to mete out empathetic justice than, say, my steak and potatoes-eating peers?

I became a Latina by the way I love and the way I live my life. My family showed me by their example how wonderful and vibrant life is and how wonderful and magical it is to have a Latina soul.

Racial identity through 'correspondence course'...interesting. By this explanation, I can one day become a Latino if I live my life, love others and believe in the magic of a Latino soul. Que chido!

I think many of us, including whites, have a vibrant and unique cultural background...the difference is most don't wear it on their sleeve, and their 'identity' tends to revolve more around the region of the US in which they were born, raised or spent a substantial part of their life, i.e., their "American" identity.

Pete

06-09-2009, 11:40

....I think many of us, including whites, have a vibrant and unique cultural background...the difference is most don't wear it on their sleeve, and their 'identity' tends to revolve more around the region of the US in which they were born, raised or spent a substantial part of their life, i.e., their "American" identity.

I'll stick with American - never was all that fond of Lutfisk.

Besides -

http://www.norway.org/culture/design/moodsofnorway_eng.htm

My eyes, my eyes

I'll stick with my bluejeans and polo shirt.

Sigaba

06-09-2009, 16:02

I think many of us, including whites, have a vibrant and unique cultural background...the difference is most don't wear it on their sleeve, and their 'identity' tends to revolve more around the region of the US in which they were born, raised or spent a substantial part of their life, i.e., their "American" identity.
With respect, I think these generalizations are overly broad and focus on a part of the history of American nationalism at the expense of the whole story.

I do not believe that it is an affront to our national dignity when many Americans, including Ms. Sotomayor, look at their country warts and all, struggle with the ongoing ambivalence with which we address issues of race, class, and gender, and then try to find an interpretation of the American dream that allows for their participation.

In regards to the continuing broadsides being fired at Ms. Sotomayor and her discussion of how culture has helped her live her life, J. H. Elliott offers food for thought in this observation of the European experience in the Americas.
Emigrants to the New World brought with them too much cultural baggage for it to be lightly discarded in their new American environment. It was, in any event, only by reference to the familiar that they could make some sense of the unfamiliar that lay all around them.*
Certain groups in America frequently decry how some groups maintain links to their past. In doing so, these groups seem to forget that those very links were parts of the foundation of American civilization. This forgetfulness brings to mind a comment offered by Richard Hofstadter.
Time is the basic dimension of history, but the basic dimension of the American imagination is space. The lessons and inspiration Americans crave from their history they have had to find in the face of their grossly foreshortened sense of time and their recurrent disposition to look rather disdainfully upon the remoter past.**
As an example of this dynamic, the mocking criticisms of Ms. Sotomayor's celebration of her Puerto Rican heritage rings harshly when one recalls the service of 65th Infantry Regiment ""The Borinqueneers," during the Korean War (CMH link here (http://korea50.army.mil/history/factsheets/hispanic.shtml), DoD link here (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=42718), El Pozo Productions documentary link here (http://www.borinqueneers.com/home).)

When it suits America's interests, it is all right to define people as "hispanic" but when those same people use labels to motivate themselves to be productive members of American society, then they are the problem.

What messages are we trying to send in our opposition to Ms. Sotomayor's confirmation? How are those messages being received?

We are stumbling into a trap. I do not believe that we are going to win 'battle of the master narratives of the American experience' by playing 'gotcha.' At the rate we're going, we are going to alienate even more Americans with whom we share many cultural sensibilities in common to the benefit of our political opposition. YMMV.

_____________________________________________
* J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), p. xiii.
** Richard Hofstadter, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (1968; reprint, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1979), p. 5.

Pete

06-09-2009, 16:19

...When it suits America's interests, it is all right to define people as "hispanic" but when those same people use labels to motivate themselves to be productive members of American society, then they are the problem.....

Sigaba;

Could you tell me what La Raza means? The group called La Raza? Have they ever called for forming a country or state from part of the US? Was the lady in question ever a member of La Raza? Do you think she shares any of the same views as the group? Which views?

Just wondering.

Of course it don't all mean squat. She will sit on the SCOTUS and she will decide which case to give a thumbs up to and which cases get a thumbs down.

Pete

Sigaba

06-09-2009, 18:24

Could you tell me what La Raza means?

The group called La Raza? Have they ever called for forming a country or state from part of the US? Was the lady in question ever a member of La Raza? Do you think she shares any of the same views as the group? Which views?

Just wondering.

Of course it don't all mean squat. She will sit on the SCOTUS and she will decide which case to give a thumbs up to and which cases get a thumbs down.

Pete

QP Pete--

From La Raza's website. Source is here (http://www.nclr.org/content/faqs/detail/39736/).
The term “La Raza” has its origins in early 20th century Latin American literature and translates into English most closely as “the people,” or, according to some scholars, “the Hispanic people of the New World.” The term was coined by Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos to reflect the fact that the people of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s races, cultures, and religions. Some people have mistranslated “La Raza” to mean “The Race,” implying that it is a term meant to exclude others. In fact, the full term coined by Vasconcelos, “La Raza Cósmica,” meaning the “cosmic people,” was developed to reflect not purity but the mixture inherent in the Hispanic people. This is an inclusive concept, meaning that Hispanics share with all other peoples of the world a common heritage and destiny.

In regards to La Raza's position on reconquista and segregation, their response is here (http://www.nclr.org/section/reconquista/).
Another misconception about NCLR is the allegation that we support a “Reconquista,” or the right of Mexico to reclaim land in the southwestern United States. NCLR has not made and does not make any such claim; indeed, such a claim is so far outside of the mainstream of the Latino community that we find it incredible that our critics raise it as an issue. NCLR has never supported and does not endorse the notion of a “Reconquista” or “Aztlán.” Similarly, NCLR’s critics falsely claim that the statement “Por La Raza todo, Fuera de La Raza nada,” [“For the community everything, outside the community nothing”] is NCLR’s motto. NCLR unequivocally rejects this statement, which is not and has never been the motto of any Latino organization.

NCLR’s work as a civil rights institution is about inclusion and participation in the American Dream, including extensive efforts to assist new immigrants in the process of fully integrating into American life. In fact, NCLR and its Affiliates work everyday to provide English classes, support naturalization efforts, and offer other services that help integrate immigrants fully into American society.

Many of these critics claim that NCLR supports dividing up sections or regions of this country by race or ethnic heritage. In particular, this claim was made by one outspoken critic of NCLR, the late Representative Charlie Norwood (R-GA). As the nation’s largest Hispanic civil rights organization, NCLR has a long, proud, well-documented history of opposing segregation based on race or ethnicity. Toward that end, we have actively contributed to the enactment and enforcement of fair housing and other civil rights laws and supported numerous measures to ensure that all Americans have the freedom to choose where to live.

In response to your query regarding my view of her views, my answer is "Does it matter?" In my mind, the question is "Can she do the job?" not "Can she do the job the way I'd like her to do it?" Or "Would I want to know her personally?"*

Let's say for argument's sake that Ms. Sotomayor's views on racial and gender difference unduly inform her approach to jurisprudence. (FWIW, I think explanations that are being discounted are (a) in these speeches she's using irony to deflect the painful memories of teaching herself how to sublimate her frustrations with America, and (b) if one were to look at the schedule of her public appearances that she provides in her questionnaire, one might notice how many of her appearances are falling one on top of another. Do public figures sit down and write a new speech for every occasion or do they recycle the speech they've been giving for weeks, months, and years? I have a stack of drafts of speeches given by SecDef Weinberger that suggest the latter.)

In any case, let's just say she truly believes that a Latina, because of her experiences, can render better decisions than an Anglo. What would happen if someone were to go through the process of comparing her decisions to her white male counterparts? (And I'm of the mind that most of the time --373 out of 380 or 98.2%--her decisions are acceptable.)

If her cognitive processes lead to the same decisions but for different reasons, then would that not speak well for American law?

More generally, the issue I'm having with the current trajectory of analysis is this. The GOP needs to grow numerically. A way to increase our ranks is to convince more Americans that our way of thinking and our policy preferences will help them achieve their goals in ways that are more efficacious, timely, and less costly than the solutions offered by our friends across the aisle.

Unfortunately, at least in my view, we're in this pattern where we respond rather harshly to Americans who articulate various levels of ambivalence towards the American experience.

Many of our fellow citizens have issues and they are looking for solutions. Rather than just telling them we don't think that the government should provide solutions to certain categories of problems and then presenting viable alternatives, we mock them.

How well is this approach working for us?

___________________________________
* IMO, the answers are "yes," "no," and "yes". YMMV.

Pete

06-09-2009, 19:10

.....How well is this approach working for us?..

So why all the Mexican flags when La Raza is marching around? I believe people wish to make a statement by the flag they carry.

Why the push from La Raza to teach Spanish in schools instead of English.

Why the push from La Raza to help illegals?

La Raza needs to say "People, the place we came from is a rat hole. Let's not turn this place into another rat hole." - And yes, I know, plenty of Got Here First Americans and people of Spanish desent were in the Southwest before the English speaking dudes got there. There seemed to be a nice balance of cultures until the 70s.

La Raza does not seem to be in the business of making Americans. They seem to be more into turf taking.

So you're saying if we carried Mexican Flags to the Tea Bag get togethers everybody would love us because we've grown?

Funny how the left never has these conversations about people who were skin heads of KKK members. I guess those folks just don't grow and are racist and bigots until the day they die.

Also funny how the right has put forth conservtive hispanic and black judges and they were savaged by the left and the press. Did the press ever call out the left for being racist or bigots in those attacks no.

I just get a liitle worn out by the double standards.

"Another misconception about NCLR is the allegation that we support a “Reconquista,” or the right of Mexico to reclaim land in the southwestern United States. NCLR has not made and does not make any such claim; indeed, such a claim is so far outside of the mainstream of the Latino community that we find it incredible that our critics raise it as an issue."

And an Imam would say Islam is a religion of peace.

Edited to add:

I dislike when minorities talk about "the white man" as if one monolithic culture jumped over the ocean from England and plopped down here intact. The country got to this point by a number of diferent cultures and tongues showing up here, learning "American" and becoming Americans.

The bulk of my family tree showed up in this country around 1914 +/-. None could speak American so they followed other Scandinavians to the Northern Plains area. Yes, they grouped themselves by language and culture, setting up little communities of similar people.

But that ended with them. The children were expected to lean American. And they did. So my Great-grandparents spoke Norwegian and very bad American, my Grandparents spoke good American and could get by in Norwegian, my parents could say a payer or two and I do not speak it.

And so I consider myself to have roots in Norway but I am an American who makes jokes about eating Lutfisk and lefsa.

I think that is the main thing that irritates "the white man" and may other races and cultures in all this. We all have a history we are proud of but we became "Americans" and put America first. To us, anybody doing anything else is going backwards.

It is fine to be proud of your heritage and it is fine to celibrate it and remember it but be an American first.

Razor

06-10-2009, 12:32

With respect, I think these generalizations are overly broad and focus on a part of the history of American nationalism at the expense of the whole story.

Which parts of my statement, exactly do you find overly broad? Am I overestimating the importance that genealogical culture should play in the lives of caucasians? Do more caucasians than I implied publically (and constantly, and often loudly) identify with the culture of their foreign ancestors rather than their own geographic region of origin? What is the 'whole story' of American nationalism that requires heavy reliance on from what country one's family originated, rather than one's own achievements?

I'm confident that there are many respected members here that can relate experiences where members of their teams, while competent in their job, were so strongly enamored with continually expressing their individuality that it interfered with the team's cohesiveness and ability to function. Even in an organization that encourages both individuality and teamwork, those that are unable to strike a balance between the two become distractors rather than contributors.

Sigaba

06-10-2009, 17:38

Which parts of my statement, exactly do you find overly broad? Am I overestimating the importance that genealogical culture should play in the lives of caucasians? Do more caucasians than I implied publicly (and constantly, and often loudly) identify with the culture of their foreign ancestors rather than their own geographic region of origin? What is the 'whole story' of American nationalism that requires heavy reliance on from what country one's family originated, rather than one's own achievements?

With respect, your comments were overly broad because they do not acknowledge that American nationalism is a cultural construct that was built over time. The present configuration of the formulation of American national identity is part of a larger tapestry that is still being woven.

The reason why many Americans identify themselves as such without reference to their racial or ethnic background, their religious beliefs (at one time religion was the first thing Americans would say about themselves), their class, or their gender was because proponents of a single national identity prevailed in the contest of how Americans identify themselves.

At the core of this contest were notions of racial and gendered difference and the notion that certain types of men were superior to all other persons.

Often, things went quite badly for Americans who did not accept their place in this hierarchy or sought to question the intellectual, economic, political, historical, (proto) scientific, medical, theological, cultural, diplomatic, martial, legal, or sociological veracity of the underlying assumptions of American nationalism.

To suggest that there's a set way in which "the importance that genealogical culture should play in the lives of Caucasians" or any other group of Americans is, in my view, problematic.

Political parties, social and economic elites, and the American state have been the driving force behind the formulation and propagation of American nationalism. If various groups of Americans of European descent do not actively identify themselves as German-Americans, Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, or other forms of the dreaded 'hyphenated American' it is because they've internalized a consistent message transmitted by the American state (most sharply during World War I): assimilate or suffer the consequences.

I agree that nationalism is an efficacious and sustainable component of American civilization. My views do not overshadow the fact that nationalism was made. American nationalism has a history. Some of this history is joyful. Some is unsavory.

It is not shameful when a fellow citizen such as Ms. Sotomayor points to some of the tensions in the history of American nationalism in the manner that she has. She is not challenging the legitimacy of American nationalism. IMO, she is simply discussing how she navigated some of the tensions of that construct so that she could be a useful participant in American life.

I am of the view that Ms. Sotomayor's approach differs dramatically from that of the current president. While Ms. Sotomayor's comments invite us to engage head on a number of issues in American history that shape us, the president simply pays lip service to these issues to his political advantage.
I'm confident that there are many respected members here that can relate experiences where members of their teams, while competent in their job, were so strongly enamored with continually expressing their individuality that it interfered with the team's cohesiveness and ability to function. Even in an organization that encourages both individuality and teamwork, those that are unable to strike a balance between the two become distractors rather than contributors.
If this dynamic has been present in Ms. Sotomayor's career, her confirmation hearings will bring supporting evidence to light.

glebo

06-11-2009, 06:55

Penn

06-11-2009, 07:25

In one of the opening statements of this thread, I stated that I supported this nomination; explaining that I was intimately aware of the mindset of the “Puertoriquena’ Latina” sensibility, by being married to one. My wife is the exact mirror reflection and SES as Judge Sotomayor. A New York Puerto Rican American raised in Da Bronx.

Why is this geopolitical cultural heritage equally important to my wife as it is to Judge Sotomayor? Because it is culturally defining and it is identity. To comprehend this one must understand the long and continual struggle that the “nuyorican” communities in New York City and in America are still fighting. It is one that embraces the entire civil rights movement as well as the civil liberties issues that have been, and still being addressed for the past fifty years.

Judge Sotomayor is the product of the social experiment known as affirmative action. She herself admits that she was accepted into two of the top Ivy schools because of her heritage, not because of her exceptional academic achievements. She readily admits this. The question today is is that fair and how does, or will that experience influence her judgment?

I think we should consider the following.

While no one today would question the 1954 Supreme Court’s decision of Brown vs the Board of education that was not the mentality then. The issue in that case centered on the separate but equal fallacy in education. The premise being that racism in education was alleviated in providing the same facilities as the (white) majority. That was a socially accepted idea based on a separate but equal doctrine from the 1896 SC case known as Plessy Vs. Ferguson., which upheld a Louisiana law that require separate but equal train cars for blacks. That 1954 civil rights court case was argued before the Court by Thurgood Marshall, on behalf of the NAACP, the future Chief Justice of the Court.

It would appear from my limited view that the future Chief Justice Marshall’s racial background played a significant role in his presentation of the argument before the court. And that the argument was successful in correcting a sixty year period of socially acceptable policy of racial injustice, which today we, as a people, proudly point to as a symbol and strength of our constitutional government.

There are those who would challenge that by extension of this decision there now exists reverse discrimination. That regardless of the social revolution of the 1960’s, the pendulum has lead to individuals like Judge Sotomayor being accepted while more qualified candidates are not. This very issue was another case argued before the court in Grutter vs., Bollinger in 2003.

This case center on the argument that the civil right debate, which created affirmative action programs, guaranteed seats for blacks, as well as other minorities, to make up for the past racial injustice, unfairly disqualifies the more academically gifted applicant. Stating that race must be a consideration in addition to other criteria’s. This decision some would point to as the issue Judge Sotomayor may have considered in the New Haven fireman’s discrimination suit addressing test scores held to different standards. Interestingly, one of the plaintiffs in that case is “Puertoriquena”. The good judge as we know ruled against the fireman.

The connection that I am attempting to make here is simple: Racial heritage and culture play a role in who and how we define ourselves, as it did for Chief Justice Marshall, so it will for any minority, including, Sotomayor. What some are missing I think is that she is telling us that yes; I am a product of this social experiment. I am aware and a result of its transformative powers, and yes, I am aware of its ability to discriminate. We should take comfort in this awareness she professes, as the decision rendered in this case forces the issue before the SCOTUS to be addressed again for further clarification. In my mind, Judge Sotomayor knew exactly what she was doing in ruling against the fireman.

Richard

06-12-2009, 05:52

From Victor Davis Hanson - and the attached cartoon pretty much sums up my personal thoughts on much of the issues and those involved. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

I No Longer Quite Believe . . .
VDH, 11 Jun 2009

<snip>

I No Longer Believe . . .

…that there will be much progress on race relations under Obama. Indeed, I fear the very opposite will occur.

Almost every major speech is predicated on his race, and his father’s always changing stance on religion. In 2011 will we still hear of his father and his family with Muslim connections?

Being Non-Racist Is Judging by Race

We are told not to believe what Justice Sotomayor on several occasions said and published — this is now something called “misspeak.” What was fascinating about her Berkeley speech was not just her now serial avowal that race and gender make one a better or worse judge. Two equally frightening facts emerged. She published these views in a periodical called La Raza Law Journal (“The Race’s” Law Journal). In her text, she referenced herself as a Latina or invoked Latina/Latino, according to my count, some 38 times. (I once told a student that if she did not stop prefacing every classroom remark about classical literature with “As a Latina…” I would answer back with the preface “As a white guy…”).

A promised postracial President nominated a justice who seems not just to be race-obsessed, but race-obsessed to the degree it governs her judicial philosophy. Woe to be a member of what she called “the old boy network” when you go into her chambers against a “Latina.” By her own admission, the Latina is the wiser party, based on her superior ‘life experiences.”

No Progress, No Nothing?

In this new racialist world, no one would ever remember that we have not had a white male Secretary of State — the world’s most powerful diplomat — in thirteen years — since the rather mediocre Warren Christopher stepped down in January 1997. There is rarely appreciation of change and what has transpired, only more anger at what supposedly must happen in the future. To read Sotomayor’s speeches, and I have now read about 5 of them, is to be subjected to a litany of statistics — always the theme being “this many judges are Hispanic, this is our percentage of the population, presto, this is what we must have…”

We Are All Percentages Points Now

There is rarely either any complexity, or appreciation of the irony to race. With between 12-20 million illegal aliens now living in the United States — the vast majority recent arrivals from Third World countries — are we to be shamed that we do not have politicians, Supreme Court justices, and professors in the proper percentages to reflect these new populations? Think of it — someone crosses the border illegally, and immediately becomes a percentage-point argument that a distant elite with a Spanish-surname is entitled to preferential treatment? (I ignore the fact Sotomayor’s racial percentages were once used by white racialists to show that minorities were inordinately responsible for violent crime in numbers far above their presence in the general population. It is unwise to quantify every aspect of the United States by racial percentages.)

The President himself never pauses and examines the irony of a half-African, half-white prep schooled person, lecturing the world on the African-American civil rights experience — with which by heritage and chronology he has had no experience.

Instead, the world of American racial identity politics distills down to the ability to claim some sort of affinity, any sort actually, with the African-American, Native American, or Mexican-American experience.

Where there is a will, there is always a way

Sometimes, as in the case of Ward Churchill, this is done through simple fabrication and fantasy. Sometimes the rich Honduran immigrant trills his r’s and uses his Spanish surname to become an oppressed “Latino” or “Hispanic.” Sometimes a Barack Obama somehow piggy-backs onto the African-American writ of prior grievance.

Princeton — the New Guantanamo

If one steps aside, ignores the contemporary chatter, and examines the process in disinterested philosophical fashion, it is abjectly illogical. (Note Michelle Obama’s brief reentry into contemporary racial politics — her testimonial confirmation of Sotomayor’s expressed discomfort and unease with Princeton undergraduate life, and the lasting unfairness of receiving affirmative action and then feeling as if the resulting gain in prestige and topflight subsidized education were not worth the commensurate sense that “they” and “some” and “others” doubted one’s achievement. Well, her reentry was very short-lived indeed.)

http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson061109.html

Counsel

06-12-2009, 08:38

"It is fine to be proud of your heritage and it is fine to celibrate it and remember it but be an American first."

Now there we have it ladies and gentlemen, if we could just get everyone to go along with that....we would be much better off. IMO anyway.

(stole your line Pete:D)

I think pretty much everything relevant and of substance has already been said in this thread. So it is what it is; but I couldn’t agree more with Glebo.

Penn

06-12-2009, 10:00

Counsel, I respectfully disagree.

Richard, in reference to Mr. Hanson’s article I am in full agreement. However, I think we are juggling apples and oranges.

The point and sentiment of the article is stating that Judge Sotomayor’s decisions, because of her public statements, which include a statement of appellant judicial social advocacy from the bench, will be prejudiced due to her expressed “Latinaness” and identification to group. That by admission, her life experience and that experience as a minority will come into play.

My first question is this: How is that not true for all of us? My second: How can that not be the sensibility we want constitutionally or with regards to the bill of rights?

In my mind, the explicitness of Judge Sotomayor remarks is refreshing in their frankness. We know were she stands with regard to civil rights. Her position is not subjective. It is not arrived at via persecution, but rather from the perspective that the democratic ideals contained in the constitution are not abstract ideas, but ideals that as framed by the founders, require judicial authority and interpretive power to be relevant and evolve.

This is readily reviewed with a glimpse of two current unresolved issues, satisfying neither the conservative nor liberal. School Prayer and the Pledge of allegiance; though both issues are really one, god being invoked, the issue of church and state. We forget not the why, but the how?

For the change in the Pledge of Allegiance, it’s the phrase “under God”. We need only to look back to the early 1950’s to recognize the how: The cold war and the red scare were a serious threat nationally, which lead to Mc McCarthyism, and the ensuing infringement on our civil rights and civil liberties, but the real threat was by a small group of determined people. I do not think I need to ask the question what if… I think we are all in agreement that to protect the constitution’s structure we need justices that emphasize the objective nature of our rights and to find practical solutions to today’s problems.

What I am responding to is the idea of democracy. Should the Pledge of Allegiance not been changed, would we be any less god fearing a people. The issue of separation of church and state is quite clear in the constitution. That does not mean we are not respectful, or that we need to amend our currency, or that we need to locate mute judges.

What we need are justices that have “lived a life”, that are the practical result of judicial activism and that are aware the constitution is an organic document; that they are entrusted to interpret on our behalf, while being mindful of its language, tradition, history and its future use.

Pete

06-12-2009, 10:32

… I think we are all in agreement that to protect the constitution’s structure we need justices that emphasize the objective nature of our rights and to find practical solutions to today’s problems....

I would hope that the SCOTUS would follow the law - not find a practical solution.

Penn

06-12-2009, 12:29

The Law is the practical solution. Brown vs the Board of education 1954 corrects a law written in 1896 by the SCOTUS= Plessy V. Ferguson, the concept of separate, but equal, is not equal in service or in education opportunities. That decision in 1954 is a practical solution to a contemporary problem. It is a compromise, which evolved into law, from and through, our organic constitution.

The compromises will continue. The case of the New Haven fire fighters is directly linked to these two cases. I think Sotomayor was well aware, as I stated earlier, that by not ruling in their favor she forced the case before the SCOTUS. Where, it will be heard in relation to those cases that are relevant to the principle of racial equality and the “pursuit of Happiness”.

The civil rights act of 1964 created affirmative action, does that mean in the past forty five years we have achieved racial, social, educational, and professional equality? I would think not, but that does not mean we should not be judge by the same standards, or test scores? In sending that case to the Court that question will be addressed no differently than women suffrage, which was not addressed until 1920, where the SCOTUS created 133yrs later, the law contained in the 19th Amendment. Not to mention the amendments which the SCOTUS fostered with regard to voting rights or due process as outline in the 14th & 15th Amendments. The Court creates law, which is its function.

Also, let us not forget that the entire document, the constitution, was a compromise. The issue of slavery was not addressed as a practical solution in order to get it ratified. It took sixty years for the solution, a civil war, but the debates between the founders were practical consideration. As much as I would like to think of them in the light as romantic idealist, many were wealthy business men with a political and financial agenda. They found practical solutions to their issues; they compromised and created the constitution and thus the law, upon which the SCOTUS as an institution of government, fulfills its duty… the insuring the supremacy of freedom and personal rights.

Pete

06-12-2009, 12:37

One persons take on the case.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/or_20090613_4064.php

Counsel

06-12-2009, 12:59

Penn

06-12-2009, 13:04

Pete, that article is actually my point. I do not believe that the panel of jurist, including Sotomayor, were unaware that the decision they rendered would not arrived before the SCOTUS.
As a judicial activist on the 2nd Appeals Court, she and her fellow justices know, knew, want, and needed to resolve some of the lingering issues of the 1954 decision which have lead to affirmative action programs that now discriminate. Only by creating a situation where a case can be heard, can it be further resolved.
I do not believe that the court operates in an Olympian vacuum; I believe that real world quite discussion occurs between the courts, and that a long view is paramount in all their consideration.
It is interesting to note that of the 150 or so SCJOTUS, 70+ received their legal education in Ivy League schools. I for one appreciate the continuity.

Pete

06-12-2009, 13:38

Pete, that article is actually my point. I do not believe that the panel of jurist, including Sotomayor, was unaware that the decision they rendered would not arrived before the SCOTUS......

That is not the point of one of the lower courts - Make a decision so it can go to a higher court.

The point of a lower court is to make their best call on the case before them. If the harmed party feels it was the wrong decision they can move to have it heard in a higher court. If it is then overturned in a higher court then the lower court made the "WRONG" call - at least in the eyes of the higher court and the individual jurists sitting on it.

Of the top of my head I do recall hearing about some cases where the court at a lower level did make mention that a point of law was not clear - but that was spelled out in the decision.

I didn't find any of that wording in Judge Sotomayor's decision.

Richard

06-13-2009, 06:34

For some balanced in-depth reading beyone the MSM and talk radio punditry -

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/

Also offers links to latest legal issues in the press, blogosphere.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Sigaba

06-20-2009, 14:31

Source is here (http://www.breitbart.com/print.php?id=D98U27CO0&show_article=1).

Sotomayor quits women's club after GOP criticism
Jun 19 07:48 PM US/Eastern
By MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor resigned Friday from an elite all-women's club after Republicans questioned her participation in it. Sotomayor said she resigned from the Belizean Grove to prevent the issue from becoming a distraction in her confirmation hearings.

In a letter to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the federal appeals court judge said she is convinced that the club does not practice "invidious discrimination" and that her membership in it did not violate judicial ethics.

But she said she didn't want questions about it to "distract anyone from my qualifications and record."

Federal judges are bound by a code that says they shouldn't join any organization that discriminates by race, sex, religion or nationality.

The Belizean Grove bills itself as women's answer to the 130-year-old all-male Bohemian Club in California. The club owns a 2,500-acre camping area in northern California called the Grove. Chief Justice Earl Warren belonged to the Bohemian Club beginning in the 1940s, before he joined the court and long before the federal judiciary adopted a code of conduct.

"The Belizean Grove is a constellation of influential women who are key decision makers in the profit, non-profit and social sectors; who build long term mutually beneficial relationships in order to both take charge of their own destinies and help others to do the same," the group says on its Web site. There are about 115 members, the club says.

Earlier in the week, Sotomayor defended her participation in the group, telling senators that it involves men in some of its events and that she was unaware of any man who had tried to become a member.

Sotomayor's backers noted that the court's only current woman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, belongs to the membership-only International Women's Forum. So did former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who defended her involvement in all-women groups during her Senate confirmation hearings in 1981.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy faced similar questions over his longtime membership in the all-male Olympic Club in San Francisco. Kennedy resigned his membership in October 1987, as he was under consideration for the high court.

Sotomayor also told the senators that the search of documents from her time as a director of a Puerto Rican advocacy group is complete.

Republicans had complained that Sotomayor initially omitted from the records she sent the Senate Judiciary Committee a report she signed urging the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF) to oppose reinstitution of the death penalty in New York in the early 1980s.

The report, which has since been provided, said, "Capital punishment is associated with evident racism in our society." It noted that African-Americans at the time made up 47 percent of death row inmates, but only 11 percent of the U.S. population.

Richard

06-20-2009, 15:47

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor resigned Friday from an elite all-women's club after Republicans questioned her participation in it. Sotomayor said she resigned from the Belizean Grove to prevent the issue from becoming a distraction in her confirmation hearings.

I was rather ambivalent about the Honorable Judge Sotomayor - until this. If this was something she believed in - and IMO there's nothing wrong with such a group - and she would abandon them (perhaps temporariily until confirmed) to help her confirmation - I have no respect for her as either a user of such relationships to get ahead or as someone who certainly stands for nothing - who is just another opportunist, a party flag blowing in whichever direction the political winds of Washington will take her. :mad:

Richard's $.02 :munchin

PRB

06-20-2009, 19:05

Hey, some Dems even pay their back taxes to get a new job...quitting a club is an easy decision....

Sigaba

06-20-2009, 22:54

This post ties into the "Don't call me 'ma'am'" incident between Senator Boxer and BG Walsh discussed on a thread located here (http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23783).

As a rule of thumb, decisions that may have political fall out in Washington, D.C. are often announced at the end of the work week. This practice attempts to leverage the fact that national news coverage on the weekends receives less attention than during the workweek itself.

Given the timing of the announcement of Ms. Sotomayor's resignation from the Belizean Grove, I was inclined to think that she and her advisers were attempting to minimize the 'distraction' that such an announcement might cause.

After all, as QP Richard's comment points out, Ms. Sotomayor's resignation expands the questions about her membership in that organization from "Why did you join?" to "Why did you quit?" While the first question may been easy enough to answer, the second will be a bit more complicated. Why risk making a minor distraction into a potentially major one?

A closer look at the timing of the announcement provides a possible answer. First, Ms. Sotomayor's resignation comes at a time when Senator Boxer is getting pilloried for her comments to BG Walsh earlier this week. The comments address her state of residence, her political affiliation, her occupation, her ego, temperament, and personality, and her gender. The gendered attacks on Ms. Boxer are in many sectors so venomous that "bitch" is the most favorable word used to describer her.

Second, thus far, much of the debate over Ms. Sotomayor's nomination to the Supreme Court centers around her ethnicity, her politics, and how the two may intertwine. In contrast, much less has been said about her gender.

Third, the treatment of women by the Democratic party and by the president were topics of heated debate and intense introspection during the presidential campaign. Some of the president's appointments may have cooled some of the dissent, it is my perception that much of the anger continues to linger. This undercurrent was probably not helped by the fact that the political left was largely silent in the recent public debate between Gov. Palin and David Letterman regarding the latter's inappropriate "jokes" about Ms. Willow Palin.

Fourth, the announcement comes on the Friday before both Fathers' Day and the first day of summer. In some sectors, a day that celebrates parenthood is taken as yet another example of the oppressive reaches of patriarchy. Likewise, the start of summer can activate feelings including ambivalence, inadequacy, self-loathing, and hostility as some women attempt to reconcile their self-images, the shapes of their bodies, and the constructed expectations of how they should look.**

Put these four factors together and one wonders if something more than happenstance is at play. There remains a widespread perception that the GOP is frequently...energetic...when it comes to issues of gendered difference. If one is seeking to add to this perception, the timing of the announcement of Ms. Sotomayor's resignation is sublime.

Imagine a scene that may play out in households around the country. People looking at their newspapers, reading about Senator Boxer and Judge Sotomayor. Maybe they're not looking forward to the festivity of the day nor confident in what they think they should wear. Maybe they're thinking about the political party that represents (at least in their perceptions) the opposite of their beliefs, and that anger that was directed towards the Democratic party, the president, and patriarchy gets shifted slightly towards the Grand Old Party.
________________________________
* ISBN-13 9780440153160
** This point was demonstrated by the empty-headed Lara Spencer in the weekend edition of The Insider during her interview with Megan Fox. Ms. Spencer focused on the prospects that American women everywhere would resent hearing that Ms. Fox's current form is the result of an unhealthy diet and very little exercise. (See, everyone?:p There are benefits to an academic approach to history. When you study culture, you have not only a legitimate reason but an intellectual obligation to keep current on the starlets :cool: of the day and what the chattering classes are saying.:rolleyes:)

Sigaba

06-21-2009, 16:39

Source is here (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/us/politics/20judge.html?_r=1&src=sch&pagewanted=print).

FYI, the source article has a number of hyper links to the rulings and studies mentioned. One could only guess where America would be if the New York Times had taken such an approach to documenting its sources earlier this decade. (Just an observation, no bitterness.)

June 20, 2009
Uncertain Evidence for ‘Activist’ Label on Sotomayor
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — When a federal appeals court ruled that the Voting Rights Act did not apply to state statutes that disqualify felons from voting, Judge Sonia Sotomayor accused her colleagues of usurping the role of Congress.

“The duty of the judge is to follow the law,” Judge Sotomayor wrote, “not to question its plain terms. I do not believe that Congress wishes us to disregard the plain language of any statute or to invent exceptions to the statutes it has created.”

“I trust that Congress would prefer to make any needed changes itself,” she added, “rather than have courts do so for it.”

Since President Obama nominated Judge Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, a ubiquitous accusation by her critics — conservative group leaders, talk show hosts, anti-abortion advocates and writers at blogs like RedState.org — is that she is a “judicial activist” who legislates from the bench.

Yet, while Judge Sotomayor has occasionally made statements outside court that conservatives find objectionable, it is far from clear that her judicial record supports the accusation that she is an activist. Several empirical studies have concluded that she is not particularly prone to overriding policy decisions by elected branches.

And her cases that have attracted the most criticism from conservatives — involving a decision to discard the results of firefighter exams because members of minorities scored poorly, a controversial property condemnation and a campaign finance law — are instances in which she deferred to policy decisions by elected branches that conservatives hoped judges would strike down.

A central problem in evaluating whether Judge Sotomayor is really a “judicial activist” is that even though the term has dominated public debate over courts for a generation, there is no consensus on its meaning.

Political scientists opt for objective criteria, saying that anytime judges strike down statutes or policy decisions by elected branches — no matter how uncontroversial their reasons — is an instance of “activism.” By that measure, several studies have found, Judge Sotomayor is a mainstream jurist.

A study of immigration appeals by Chad Westerland, a professor at the University of Arizona, found that Judge Sotomayor had upheld the executive branch’s deportation decisions 84 percent of the time — virtually the same as her court’s average.

And a continuing study of 2008 cases by Corey Yung, a professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, found that her activism rate in all types of cases ranked 34th out of 52 judges. His data include five appeals courts so far.

“Over all, she is less activist than average — not by an enormous stretch, but she is basically there in the mainstream,” Mr. Yung said.

But at a recent panel discussion on Judge Sotomayor, M. Edward Whelan III, president of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, faulted such scholars as not distinguishing between routine judicial “activity” and judicial “activism” — which he defined as the invention of dubious rights as a cover for wrongfully overriding elected officials.

Mr. Whelan also said there were other kinds of error besides activism, including its opposite, “judicial passivism,” when judges improperly let something stand. But Roger Clegg, president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, said his definition of “activism” included judges’ upholding favored statutes or policies even though they violate someone’s rights.

By that measure, Mr. Clegg said, Judge Sotomayor is an activist. “She’s shown that she is willing to ignore constitutional protections or statutory protections in order to uphold government actions of which she approves, like campaign finance laws and like the use of racial preferences,” he said.

But Richard Epstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago who has criticized Judge Sotomayor’s votes in the firefighters and condemnation cases, said that applying the term to her was a vacuous exercise.

“ ‘Judicial activism’ tells you nothing,” he said. “The term ought to be scrapped. In today’s world it’s just a synonym for bad decisions. O.K., I’m against bad decisions, too. But you always have to explain why, and there’s no shortcut for doing that.”

In some cases, as with her felon disenfranchisement dissent, Judge Sotomayor has lauded “judicial restraint” and expressed disapproval of judges who come up with creative reasoning seemingly to achieve policy outcomes.

In a 2000 dissent in an airplane crash case, for example, she chastised colleagues as stretching their legal interpretation out of “an understandable desire to provide the relatives” of victims a larger recovery.

In a 2000 dissent in a lobstering dispute, she said the majority was advancing a “novel interpretation” and a “creative approach.” While she agreed that it made policy sense, she said it was “contrary to the plain meaning of the statute.”

And in a 2002 dissent involving the firing of a police officer who had distributed bigoted materials, she said the majority bypassed precedent and entered “uncharted territory in our First Amendment jurisprudence” because it disliked the officer’s views.

But there are also instances in her 3,000-case record in which she has been similarly criticized. In 2000, she joined a dissent that would have limited police authority to search for a suspect using race as a factor. A judge in the majority said the dissent had invented “novel equal protection theories.”

In any case, Mr. Whelan said, Supreme Court justices have a freer hand than appeals court judges. He pointed to comments Judge Sotomayor has made in speeches as evidence that she may harbor an activist mind-set waiting to be “liberated.”

“Sotomayor’s rulings present fewer demonstrable instances of judicial activism, narrowly defined, than those of some other liberal judges,” he said. “But her speeches about the judicial role and her broader record strongly suggest that she will be a liberal judicial activist” if confirmed.

Many critics point to a brief clip from a 2005 panel discussion where she said an “appeals court is where policy is made.”

But she immediately retracted her words, and a fuller clip shows that she went on to explain that she had meant to say that appellate judges think about the ramifications their decisions will have as precedents.

And in more extensive comments on that same theme in a 2000 speech, she defined judicial attention to “policy” in terms of deference to lawmakers.

Judges, she said, consider the “policy impact” of their analysis and holdings in order to avoid creating precedents that could “lead to results in other cases which cannot be squared with the language of a statute or its legislative history and purpose.”

Correction: June 20, 2009

A previous version of this article gave the wrong year for an airplane crash case in which Judge Sonia Sotomayor dissented. It was in 2000, not 1996.

Sigaba

06-27-2009, 14:10

Could Sotomayor be racist, but not per se prejudiced? Everyone uses the two terms interchangeably, but racist just means that you make assumptions about a person based on their "race" or ethnicity. If I assume a black guy can play basketball, that is racism. Doesn't mean I hate him. If I see an Asian college student and assume he is a physics or engineering student, again that's racism, but not hate of the person based on ethnicity.

Prejudice is when you hate or severely dislike someone based on race/ethnicity, sex, age, sexual preference, etc...at least from my understanding.

From what I can see, she clearly seems racist, but I am not sure about prejudiced (although maybe that too somewhat).
A variant on your point uses "bigot" and "bigotry" in many of the places you use "racist."

Your thought-provoking post begs at least one question. Mine is: are stereotypes and pre-conceptions, no matter how flattering, inherently dehumanizing and, therefore, ultimately limiting in helping us to understand each other as people?

Richard

06-27-2009, 15:25

Your thought-provoking post begs at least one question. Mine is: are stereotypes and pre-conceptions, no matter how flattering, inherently dehumanizing and, therefore, ultimately limiting in helping us to understand each other as people?

Are you making reference to statements such as "How's the weather down there? and "That red hair is no lie!" and the like? It might be of interest to know what kind of assumptions are made of members of this forum simply based upon the avatars they choose for themselves. ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVr1n1ha-LA

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Sigaba

06-28-2009, 07:15

It might be of interest to know what kind of assumptions are made of members of this forum simply based upon the avatars they choose for themselves.
QP Richard, are you saying that you're not as hirsute as your avatar suggests? That's unfortunate as you were a candidate for a trials of a new procedure for making hair plugs with donated hair follicles. (No, I would not be a recipient of such plugs. I am perfectly comfortable with the fact that my forehead is demonstrably larger than it was six years ago. Perfectly comfortable, not the least bit in denial, not at all bitter.)

I would think so. I didn't mean to imply being racist was okay, just that there is a difference between holding assumptions on people based on ethnicity or race and just blatantly disliking or hating people based on ethnicity or race.
IMO, I thought you made your point clearly in your earlier post. I agree that there's a difference between racist views as a character trait (a trait that is common to all) and racist views as a character flaw.

swpa19

06-28-2009, 09:54

SIGBA:

I am perfectly comfortable with the fact that my forehead is demonstrably larger than it was six years ago. Perfectly comfortable, not the least bit in denial, not at all bitter.)

It is a sad fact of life, that as age creeps up on us, so does the length of our foreheads.

RICHARD:

It might be of interest to know what kind of assumptions are made of members of this forum simply based upon the avatars they choose for themselves.

As has been pointed out to me, my avatar is very close to a family portrait. I keep tellin y'all Im just a good ole boy thet lives in the holler next to the crick.

Richard

06-28-2009, 10:38

I keep tellin y'all Im just a good ole boy thet lives in the holler next to the crick.

Raht nicet lookin' hollar if ya ast me. :p Ah'd be kerrful - thet thar judge maht wanna move on in wit y'all.

Richard's $.02 :munchin

swpa19

06-28-2009, 14:12

RICHARD

If that judge and others of her ilk gain prominence, I think Ill have to move from my holler to a fortified position on a military crest.

Sigaba

06-28-2009, 14:32

Source is here (http://www.rollcall.com/news/36363-1.html?type=printer_friendly).

McConnell Says Time Needed to Review New Sotomayor Material
June 28, 2009, 11:48 a.m.
By Tory Newmyer
Roll Call Staff

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Sunday said the Senate needs more time to review the record of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor after new material surfaced from her time with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.

“Just a day or so ago, we discovered that there are 300 or so boxes of additional material that has just been discovered from her time working with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund,” McConnell said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

“The committee needs to have access to that material and time to work through it so we know all the facts before we vote on a person who is up for a lifetime job,” McConnell said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to take up the nomination on July 13. Republicans have complained bitterly about the timetable for considering the nomination. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is aiming for a floor vote before the Senate breaks in August.

Sotomayor served on the group’s board of directors from 1980 to 1992. Conservatives opposed to her nomination have seized on a 1981 memo signed by her and two other directors of the group, which is now called LatinoJustice PRLDEF. In it, the directors argued against reinstating the death penalty in New York state, making the case that capital punishment is racist because it is disproportionately imposed on minorities.
MOO, the Senate should have scheduled the hearings to take place later in the summer in the first place, and should take more time to review these documents. I am not holding my breath.

If push comes to shove, the documents can be scanned and digitized and then run through search engines.

nmap

06-28-2009, 14:53

Mine is: are stereotypes and pre-conceptions, no matter how flattering, inherently dehumanizing and, therefore, ultimately limiting in helping us to understand each other as people?

Potentially - sure. We might view this as a cost of maintaining such views.

But the behavior is both persistent and pervasive. So does this imply that we are, by and large, irrational? Do we engage in a behavior that has an associated cost but no benefit? Or - is there a benefit such that we perceive a net gain from the behavior? I contend it is the latter situation that applies.

I think we deal with a large number of people, and interact frequently. Therefore, we are faced with the problem of making a variety of decisions, both rapidly and with some degree of validity, about our behavior based on minimal information. In many instances, our information consists of little more than a visual snapshot.

What do we do with this? We determine social rank, we determine what vocabulary we will use, and whether the other person is "one of us" or "not one of us". We conduct ourselves accordingly.

Let us suppose there are three QPs, all in uniform, talking with each other. Let us also suppose a civilian with no military background is in the same room. Will the QPs make some assumptions about the civilian? Will the civilian do the same? If the people start to interact, will they do so based on stereotypes that each has about the other? I think the answer must surely be yes. The QPs will probably not venture into certain subject areas; the civilian will do likewise. And yet, none of the people in this scenario bear any ill-will toward the others.

John Molloy's "Dress for Success" speaks to the phenomenon. If we judge others by the pattern on their tie, the color of their suit, or the type of raincoat they wear, it seems unlikely that we will not judge them based on every visual clue we can acquire. For example, those with extended foreheads are clearly better people. :D

I don't think we can get away from stereotypes. But we can be aware of our preconceptions and thus mitigate some of the worst consequences of an entirely normal human trait.

Sigaba

06-28-2009, 21:37

So does this imply that we are, by and large, irrational? Do we engage in a behavior that has an associated cost but no benefit? Or - is there a benefit such that we perceive a net gain from the behavior? I contend it is the latter situation that applies.
FWIW, my view of human behavior is informed by Freud's "discovery" of the unconscious. As most of what we do is dictated by the unconscious and the unconscious is essentially inaccessible to conscious examination, the self is unknowable.

Since the self is unknowable, we also cannot know anyone else. The Cohen Brothers captured the essence of this sensibility well enough in Miller's Crossing (1990) as Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) said on a couple of occasions, "Nobody knows anybody. Not that well."*

Rational thought constructs what the self cannot discern. A constellation of skills that some (including myself) call character play a key role in making sure that man rides the horse and not the other way around.

I think we deal with a large number of people, and interact frequently. Therefore, we are faced with the problem of making a variety of decisions, both rapidly and with some degree of validity, about our behavior based on minimal information. In many instances, our information consists of little more than a visual snapshot.

What do we do with this? We determine social rank, we determine what vocabulary we will use, and whether the other person is "one of us" or "not one of us". We conduct ourselves accordingly.

<<SNIP>>

I don't think we can get away from stereotypes. But we can be aware of our preconceptions and thus mitigate some of the worst consequences of an entirely normal human trait.
The challenge America faces in managing this trait is the legacy of the country's rapid transation from a nation that used slave labor to being a slave society. That society rested unsteadily on a constructed hierarchy of race AND gender.**

Americans of all persuasions have addressed and continue to address this legacy in good faith to the best of their abilities. But will this collective effort continue to result in patches and fixes that keep those bits of bad code still floating around from causing a permanent fatal error?

Until we answer that question, discussions of Thomas Jefferson's positive contributions to American civilization can be trumped in many quarters by two words: Sally Hemings.

I think the best we'll do will be along the following lines.***
[She] looked down into her Scotch for a moment, then back up at Hawk, and her gaze was steady.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I treated you as his sidekick."

"That's right."

"I can't undo it," she said, "but I won't do it again."

"That's progress."

[She] drank the rest of her Scotch. She reached for the bottle and Hawk beat her to it.

"Allow me," he said.

___________________________
* The notion of the unknowable self sends clinical psychoanalytic theory in two directions. The first, pioneered by Freud, centers around "drives" that are, metaphorically speaking, the firmware and middleware of the human psyche. The code is written in some obscure machine language that has to be downloaded and translated but no one has the right dongle so one has to be built from scratch and, dammit, it looks like it was made for the wrong type of port so one has to start over. (Sometimes, I miss software engineers.) Drive theory holds that how we behave has everything to do with instincts that took shape at the dawn of human civilization, and little, if anything, to do with the external world. One has problems with his mother because of unresolved Oedipal issues, his coworkers because of castration anxiety, or his wife because she has penis envy (three orders of roll the eyes to go, please...:rolleyes:).

The second, raised initially by Anna Freud, agrees that human behavior is driven by the unconscious. The common feature of all the iterations of this second approach (and there are many) is the theory that people are interacting with the external world in the here and now. (The different iterations vary widely on the nature of that interaction. To extend the metaphor, this second direction focuses on the OS, its usability, and the potential for patches and fixes.) One has problems with one's mother because as a neonate the dyadic relationship did not establish a facilitating environment that allowed for separation-individuation and/or the mother suffered from a narcissistic injury and/or she was not a "good enough" mother and/or there was a critical mass of empathetic failures ("I asked for a red bike but got a blue one") and/or she was a drunk and/or one is a maladaptive asshat (not a clinical term) and/or none of the above and/or all of the above and/or a different set of reasons altogether. "Tell me the dream again...."* A general overview is provided in Stephen A. Mitchell and Margaret J. Black, Freud And Beyond: A History Of Modern Psychoanalytic Thought, ISBN-13, 978-0465014057. A more detailed discussion can be found in Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory, ISBN-13, 978-0674629752.

A comment. Academics and layperson who study psychoanalysis from a non-clinical perspective often make associations between psychoanalysis and postmodernism because both allow for an ever shifting answer to the question "Why?" What is overlooked, IMO, is the fact that clinical psychoanalysis, unlike postmodernism, is ultimately rooted in a shared reality (i.e. the modern world as lived). In that world, results matter. The analysis is successful when the analysand can function in everyday life. While sometimes a cigar is just a cigar at this exact moment but will be something else the next, the hour is still going to end at the fiftieth minute and there's going to be a bill for X dollars that is payable on receipt.

** MOO, the influence of this hierarchy goes beyond visual cues to the deepest aspects of perception. Some might point to the rapid sea change in American culture that turned black face minstrelsy from a mainstay to a marginalized outcast, roundly condemned when kids at a frat party pass around the shoe polish. Yet, I wondered about that supposed marginalization when I see films in which CGI characters speak with a certain patois as their eyes bug out and they run around frantically. IMO, The Phantom Menace reached a level of virulence unseen in American film since Birth of a Nation, although Oliver Stone came pretty close with Platoon.:rolleyes: And when it comes to misogyny, no film I've ever seen comes close to Jurassic Park except maybe Contact and Twister. YMMV.

*** Robert B. Parker, A Catskill Eagle, ISBN-10, 0440111323, p. 174.

The Reaper

06-29-2009, 08:36

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/29/AR2009062901608_pf.html

Court rules for white firefighters over promotions

By MARK SHERMAN
The Associated Press
Monday, June 29, 2009 10:27 AM

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide, potentially limiting the circumstances in which employers can be held liable for decisions when there is no evidence of intentional discrimination against minorities.

"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them."

Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg's dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday.

Kennedy's opinion made only passing reference to the work of Sotomayor and the other two judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who upheld a lower court ruling in favor of New Haven.

But the appellate judges have been criticized for producing a cursory opinion that failed to deal with "indisputably complex and far from well-settled" questions, in the words of another appeals court judge, Sotomayor mentor Jose Cabranes.

"This perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal," Cabranes said, in a dissent from the full 2nd Circuit's decision not to hear the case.

swpa19

06-29-2009, 08:50

A ray of sanity in the asylum known as the supreme court?

Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion.

A Test was given, these men passed it, I think this gives them a vested interest and a right to promotion.

Guy

06-29-2009, 08:59

I could see this coming...The Supreme Court has ruled that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge.

New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities.

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide, potentially limiting the circumstances in which employers can be held liable for decisions when there is no evidence of intentional discrimination against minorities.

"Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them."

Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg's dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday.

"Reverse" discrimination is wrong also.

Stay safe.

steel71

06-29-2009, 11:15

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion.

I thought the Supreme Court rules by law----not by "feelings"? Oh, I forgot, we have some members with a Marxist tinge. The point wasn't who got promoted, it's just a list for possible future promotions. To throw out the list based on race, was unlawful. Why doesn't she get this? :rolleyes:

ACE844

06-29-2009, 15:06

I'm glad to hear the SJC made the correct decision in this case.

Sigaba

06-29-2009, 15:20

FWIW, the court ruling is available here (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=4&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.supremecourtus.gov%2Fopinions %2F08pdf%2F07-1428.pdf&ei=8SNJSq7uEZSOtAO21bEo&usg=AFQjCNGyVSeLNvT4v87eVK2Uo69IqGVE-A).

It is worth noting that Mr. Sheehan's article encapsulates the dissenting opinion by using one sentence from the second paragraph of a thirty-eight page document. It is as if a reporter rushing to file a story, grabbed a copy of the decision, quickly flipped through it until finding the dissenting opinion, and casually skimmed the first page looking for a sound bite.

If said reporter had expanded the standard of journalistic due diligence:rolleyes: and also skimmed the last page of Justice Ginsburg's dissent, he might have noticed a vicious jab tucked away in footnote 21. Justice Alito certainly did.

Or he could just have skimmedthe whole document--because reading the whole thing is out of the question--and noticed that there are actually four arguments being made and one of them, offered by Justice Scalia, suggests that the distance between the majority opinion and the dissenting view may not be so great after all. Scalia opined:
[T]he Court’s...resolution of this dispute merely postpones the evil day on which the Court will have to confront the question: Whether, or to what extent, are the disparate-impact provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 consistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection? The question is not an easy one.
The Fourth Estate whines and gripes about the state of the news industry yet, time and again, its members, given the choice between providing accurate and relevant information, take the easy way out and go the TMZ route.

incarcerated

06-30-2009, 01:33

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124631926843370957.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Decision Reflects Court's Deep Division

JUNE 30, 2009
By JESS BRAVIN
WASHINGTON -- Sonia Sotomayor, the New York appellate judge President Barack Obama has nominated to the Supreme Court, has credited her success in part to postwar America's efforts to correct centuries of racial discrimination.

If, as expected, her nomination is confirmed, the self-described "affirmative-action baby" will join a court divided on that very topic.

Chief Justice John Roberts came to the court with a deep-seated skepticism of race-conscious policies. In a number of cases his court has ruled, often 5-4, in favor of limiting the scope of civil-rights laws and practices devised to address racial discrimination.

"It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race," Justice Roberts wrote in a 2006 concurring opinion rejecting a Voting Rights Act challenge to Texas' congressional redistricting.

"This is an area where there are sharply divergent intuitions about the role of race in American society, and sharply divergent views about what should be done about it," says Goodwin Liu, co-director of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity and Diversity at the University of California, Berkeley.

Some expect Judge Sotomayor would buttress the court's liberal wing, which has adhered to precedents that upheld aggressive race-conscious programs in an era when the sting of discrimination was fresh. Although likely to be in dissent at least until a conservative justice retires, Judge Sotomayor could revive traditional liberal doctrines.

"Her own persona, as someone who is self-identified with an ethnic group, and one she believes has in some sense been discriminated against...will make her position more rhetorically powerful" on race cases than David Souter, the liberal-leaning justice she would replace, says John McGinnis, a Northwestern University law professor.

It also is possible that she could seek to hammer out a middle ground. Still, sometimes justices' views change, if subtly, over time. The chief justice himself has displayed a more moderate streak this term. Earlier this month, he wrote an opinion joined by seven other justices that left alive a bedrock provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Supreme Court's decision Monday in the New Haven firefighters' case highlights the justices' split. The four liberals would have upheld the city's decision to toss out test results that it worried were discriminatory.

A concurring opinion from Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, effectively accused New Haven's leadership of pandering to a local black political leader in throwing out the test results. Notably, Chief Justice Roberts didn't join that toughly worded opinion.

Last year, Judge Sotomayor was one of a three-member panel that found for New Haven with a brief paragraph upholding a lower-court opinion.

Judge Sotomayor's most famous words have come not from any judicial opinion, but from a lecture she delivered to a Hispanic law student group. "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," she said. Should she join the Supreme Court, that hope could find its toughest test in cases where race itself is the issue.

HMass18Z

07-02-2009, 08:09

Here is a good editorial from Dr. Thomas Sowell

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/07/01/equality_on_trial_97251.html

BLUF....why is BHO wanting to appoint someone to the Supreme Court that has had 2/3 of her decisions overturned by the court ??????

For the fourth time in six cases, the Supreme Court of the United States has reversed a decision for which Judge Sonia Sotomayor voted on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. If this nominee were a white male, would this not raise questions about whether he should be elevated to a court that has found his previous decisions wrong two-thirds of the times when those decisions have been reviewed?

Is no one supposed to ask questions about qualifications, simply because this nominee is Hispanic and a woman? Have we become that mindless?

Qualifications are not simply a question of how long you have been doing something, but how well you have done it. Judge Sotomayor has certainly been on the federal bench long enough, but is being reversed four out of six times a sign of a job well done?

Would longevity be equated with qualifications anywhere else? Some sergeants have been in the army longer than some generals but nobody thinks that is a reason to make those sergeants generals.

Performance matters. And Judge Sotomayor's performance provides no reason for putting her on the Supreme Court.

Although the case of the Connecticut firefighters is the latest and best-known of Judge Sotomayor's reversals by the Supreme Court, an even more revealing case was Didden v. Village of Port Chester, where the Supreme Court openly rebuked the unanimous three-judge panel that included Judge Sotomayor for "an evident denial of the most elementary forms of procedural due process."

Longevity is not the only false argument for putting Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court. Another is the argument that "elections have consequences," so that the fact that Barack Obama won last year's elections means that his choice for the Supreme Court should be confirmed. This is a political talking point rather than a serious argument.

Of course elections have consequences. But Senators were also elected, and the Constitution of the United States gives them both the right and the duty to say "yes" or "no" to any president's judicial nominees.

It is painfully appropriate that the case which finally took the Sotomayor nomination beyond the realm of personal biography is one where the key question is how far this country is going to go on the question of racial representation versus individual qualifications.

Too much that Sonia Sotomayor has said and done over the years places her squarely in the camp of those supporting a racial spoils system instead of equal treatment for all. The organizations she has belonged to, as well as the statements she has made repeatedly -- not just an isolated slip of the tongue taken "out of context"-- as well as her dismissing the white firefighters' case that the Supreme Court heard and heeded, all point in the same direction.

Within living memory, there was a time when someone who was black could not get certain jobs, regardless of how high that individual's qualifications might be. It outraged the conscience of a nation and aroused people of various races and social backgrounds to rise up against it, sometimes at the risk of their lives.

Many, if not most, thought that they were fighting for equal treatment for all. But, today, too many people seem to think it is just a question of whose ox is gored-- or for whom one has "empathy," which amounts to the same thing in practice.

Clever people say that none of this matters because Republican Senators don't have enough votes to stop this nominee from being confirmed. But that assumes that every Democrats will vote for her, regardless of what the public thinks. It also assumes that alerting the public doesn't matter, now or for the future.

The standards for judging the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor are not the standards of either the criminal law or the civil law. That is, nothing has to be proven against her "beyond a reasonable doubt" or even by "a preponderance of the evidence."

Judge Sotomayor is not in any jeopardy that would entitle her to the benefit of the doubt. It is 300 million Americans and their posterity who are entitled to the benefit of the doubt when the enormous power of determining what their rights are is put into anyone's hands as a Supreme Court justice for life.

Saoirse

07-02-2009, 09:08

Richard

07-03-2009, 07:26

An American of Puerto Rican ancestry who understands the concepts behind opportunity in America. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

For Hispanic Firefighter in New Haven Bias Suit, Awkward Position but Firm Resolve
A. G. Sulzberger, NYT, 2 Jul 2009

The two dozen firefighters who packed into Humphrey’s East Restaurant were celebrating a coming marriage, drinking and jawboning in the boisterous style of large men with risky jobs, but Lt. Ben Vargas spent the evening trying to escape the tension surrounding his presence.

During a trip to the bathroom, he found himself facing another man. Without warning, the first punch landed. When Lieutenant Vargas awoke, bloodied and splayed on the grimy floor, he was taken to the hospital.

Lieutenant Vargas believes the attack, five years ago, was orchestrated by a black firefighter in retaliation for his having joined a racial discrimination lawsuit against the city over its tossing out of an exam for promotion that few minority firefighters passed. (No arrests were made in the attack, and the black firefighter vigorously denies having been involved.)

When the Hispanic firefighters’ association and its members — including Lieutenant Vargas’s brother — refused to publicly stand behind him, he quit the organization.

Lieutenant Vargas, who posted the sixth-highest score on the exam, was ridiculed as a token, a turncoat and an Uncle Tom — all of which, he said, “made my resolve that much stronger.”

When the United States Supreme Court ruled this week in the firefighters’ favor, Lieutenant Vargas, 40, the son of Puerto Rican parents, found himself celebrating amid an awkward racial dynamic: As the lone Hispanic among the 18 plaintiffs who had challenged an affirmative action policy, he had also challenged an appeals court decision joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic nominee to the Supreme Court.

“She’s from Puerto Rico, and I’m from Puerto Rico,” he said. “She obviously feels differently than I do.”

The Supreme Court’s 5-to-4 decision is expected to have repercussions on employment discrimination law that go well beyond fire departments, where minority groups have been woefully underrepresented, particularly in leadership positions. On the steps of the federal courthouse in New Haven on Monday, a lawyer for the firefighters, Karen Lee Torre, said they had “become a symbol for millions of Americans who have grown tired of seeing individual achievement and merit take a back seat to race and ethnicity.”

For Lieutenant Vargas, the ruling will probably mean a long-awaited promotion to captain in a 350-member department that he has admired since childhood but that has been plagued for decades by racial tension and recriminations.

“I consider myself an American — I was born and raised here,” he said in an interview on the porch of his home in the wooded suburb of Wallingford. “I love my people. I love my culture. I love our rice and beans, our salsa music, our language — everything my parents raised us with. But I am so grateful for the opportunity only the United States can give.”

He grew up in the troubled Fair Haven neighborhood of New Haven, a complicated city known for Yale University but also for urban decay, high crime rates and failed prospects, roots he sees as similar to Judge Sotomayor’s in a Bronx public housing project.

His father was a factory worker, and his mother took care of the couple’s three children. (In addition to his brother, David, who did not respond to interview requests, he has a sister who now lives in Puerto Rico.) The family spoke Spanish at home, making his adjustment to school “traumatic,” he said.

Lieutenant Vargas decided to follow the path of an older friend, John Marquez, whom he looked up to. Mr. Marquez had worked his way out of the neighborhood by joining the Fire Department.

“I used to tell him, ‘You know where I came from — if I can make it, anyone can,’ ” Mr. Marquez, now a deputy chief in the department, said in an interview. “ ‘But don’t expect anything to be handed to you. Work for it.’ ”

But Lieutenant Vargas’s aspirations were stymied by a 1988 lawsuit, filed by black firefighters, that shut down hiring for years. The lawsuit challenged a written test that relatively few nonwhites passed. In 1994, the city agreed to disregard the test, over union complaints, and hire 40 firefighters — 20 white, 10 black and 10 Hispanic, according to The New Haven Register.

Lieutenant Vargas was among those hired. That later led some people to criticize him as trying to shut the door that welcomed him, though he maintained that it was impossible to know how he would have done under the old hiring process.

He was promoted to lieutenant in 2000, and he now leads a four-person crew at a red-brick single-engine firehouse not far from where he grew up. He also works part time as a consultant for a company that sells equipment for firefighters.

“When I leave the firehouse, I bring it home with me,” he said. “I read about it. Think about it. I love this job. I don’t think there’s anything else I could do better.”

In 2003, Lieutenant Vargas was one of 56 people in the department who passed a test for promotion; 15 were black or Hispanic. When city officials discovered that only two of those were likely to be immediately promoted, they decided to throw out the test, citing concerns that minority candidates might again sue, alleging discrimination.

Instead, a group of white firefighters sued. The results had been posted by race, without names, and when Lieutenant Vargas learned that a Hispanic firefighter had scored sixth among 41 lieutenants on the test to become a captain, he joined the suit. Only later did he discover that the score was his.

“I would have carried the load all by myself,” he said of filing the suit. “Luckily there were enough people out there who felt like I did that we could stand together.”

But Lieutenant Vargas bore more than his share of the criticism, said Lt. Matthew Marcarelli, who was among the plaintiffs and has known Lieutenant Vargas since they were classmates at the fire academy. “Why the other guys viewed him as a turncoat I really don’t understand. He did it because he’s principled and he thought it was the right thing to do. Benny’s nobody’s token.”

Chief Marquez said his old protégé was “an easy target because he didn’t fall in line.”

“It seems that if you’re not the right type of minority, you get hammered,” he said.

The president of the black firefighters’ group in New Haven did not return calls seeking comment.

Despite the ugly episode at Humphrey’s East shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Lieutenant Vargas said that little tension remained in the department, and that he was hopeful that the court decision would end the rest.

He noted that the Hispanic firefighters’ association reversed course in February, after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, and publicly endorsed his position.

Gesturing toward his three young sons, Lieutenant Vargas explained why he had no regrets. “I want them to have a fair shake, to get a job on their merits and not because they’re Hispanic or they fill a quota,” he said. “What a lousy way to live.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/nyregion/03firefighter.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Snaquebite

07-03-2009, 09:42

“I want them to have a fair shake, to get a job on their merits and not because they’re Hispanic or they fill a quota,” he said. “What a lousy way to live.”

WELL SAID

incarcerated

07-07-2009, 23:44

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/08/sotomayor-plays-the-race-card/?feat=home_editorials

EDITORIAL:
Sotomayor plays the race card

'Inherent physiological differences' as a legal standard
Wednesday, July 8, 2009

A biased judge should not be promoted to a higher court. Yet the Obama administration has not been able to put to rest fears that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor might let ethnic grievances sway her decisions on the bench.

That's exactly what it appears Judge Sotomayor did in the Ricci v. DeStefano case, in which she ruled that white firefighters could be denied promotions they clearly had earned. That's why it is worth revisiting the Supreme Court nominee's infamous "wise Latina" speech. The renewed focus on that speech should center on two highly objectionable lines that have not received enough attention.

The most quoted sentence from the speech in question, as published in the spring 2002 issue of Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, is that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion that a white male who hasn't lived that life." That statement alone is troubling. It suggests that ethnicity trumps the facts and the law. She repeated that line, or variations of it, in at least seven other speeches.

However, that sentence, bad as it is, pales in comparison with two others from that speech -- each of which she repeated on at least two occasions.
In the Berkeley speech, a 2003 speech at Seton Hall University and a 2002 address at Princeton University, Judge Sotomayor said this: "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague [federal district] Judge [Miriam] Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."

In both the Princeton speech and the Seton Hall speech, she repeated another line, nearly verbatim, from the Berkeley address: "My experiences will affect the facts that I choose to see as a judge."

The first statement is the more abhorrent. In any other circumstance, any person who asserts that there are "inherent physiological" differences between the races -- especially when discussing mental abilities -- is automatically shunned from polite society and sometimes fired. If it is a fireable offense for sports and entertainment figures -- such as the late Los Angeles Dodger executive Al Campanis and the late oddsmaker Jimmy the Greek -- to assert that the races have inherent differences, then why is it OK for a judge to make such a bald assertion?

Judge Sotomayor, unlike Jimmy the Greek, took an oath to administer the law impartially. Her offense, therefore, is more serious.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the "inherent physiological ... difference" line -- expressing a belief that Judge Sotomayor said she does not "abhor" or "discount" -- is an assertion one would have expected to hear more from 1960s race-baiters like George Wallace than from somebody nominated for the Supreme Court.

Then there's the line about "facts that I choose to see as a judge." It's a dangerous standard to assert that a judge is allowed to "choose to see" certain facts and not others.

In those same speeches, Judge Sotomayor endorsed the idea that "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives -- no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging." A judge who chooses to see certain facts and ignore others, and who rejects the notion of objectivity, is a judge untethered from her sworn duty to provide impartial justice.

It's in that light that two of Judge Sotomayor's positions look most ominous. It is fair to question whether it was the law she was trying to uphold, or her own biases, that led to her decision to deny promotions to the white firefighters in Ricci v. DeStefano. It is likewise questionable whether the law or her biases led her to assert that if a state's prison population is disproportionately black or Latino, currently imprisoned murderers must be allowed to vote.

No judge who says her gender or ethnicity allows her to choose to see only certain facts and not others should come within a country mile of a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.

Sigaba

07-08-2009, 00:52

In regards to the op-ed piece from the Washington Times referenced in above (http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=272823&postcount=158), it is worth noting that the paper has previously offered a different view on the impropriety of racial views influencing a jurist's rulings.

Five years ago, Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered appreciative remarks of one of his predecessors, Roger Taney. Missing from the article, available here (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/apr/07/20040407-101907-3205r/print/), was any discussion of the role views of race played in the Taney court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which is available here (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0060_0393_ZO.html).

In delivering that ruling, Justice Taney offered the following view of Africans, their American descendants, and the peculiar institution.

They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect, and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic whenever a profit could be made by it. This opinion was at that time fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race. It was regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics which no one thought of disputing or supposed to be open to dispute, and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern, without doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion.

Given the disconnect between the paper's treatment of the views of these two jurists, one wonders what the editors' concerns actually are.

Defender968

07-08-2009, 05:44

In regards to the op-ed piece from the Washington Times referenced in above (http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=272823&postcount=158), it is worth noting that the paper has previously offered a different view on the impropriety of racial views influencing a jurist's rulings.

Five years ago, Chief Justice Rehnquist delivered appreciative remarks of one of his predecessors, Roger Taney. Missing from the article, available here (https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2004/apr/07/20040407-101907-3205r/print/), was any discussion of the role views of race played in the Taney court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which is available here (http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0060_0393_ZO.html).

In delivering that ruling, Justice Taney offered the following view of Africans, their American descendants, and the peculiar institution.

Given the disconnect between the paper's treatment of the views of these two jurists, one wonders what the editors' concerns actually are.

Sigaba are you comparing the two statements, do you think Justice Taney’s statements should have been condemned?

As far as I can see Justice Taney’s above statement was not his view but rather a recap of the thinking at the time. I visited a slave market museum this weekend, and can say that in terms of history what he said was how many people thought at the time. I am in no way saying that is right as we all know it was not, but it was the thinking at the time.

Saoirse

07-08-2009, 12:09

Oh it gets better!

NRA Expressing Concern Over Sotomayor

http://www.foxnews.com/video/index.html

Sigaba

07-08-2009, 16:47

Sigaba are you comparing the two statements, do you think Justice Taney’s statements should have been condemned?
Defender968--

Yes, I am comparing the two statements by the Washington Times. The editors' opinion on Ms. Sotomayor's would have longer legs if it reflected a view consistently expressed over time.

Condemned may be too strong a word. I would prefer a position somewhere between ahistorical condemnation and the Washington Times's artful avoidance in the 2004 piece.

(Why not an exploration of instances in which the jurists' personal views on race and gender proved disastrous to the United States?)

As far as I can see Justice Taney’s above statement was not his view but rather a recap of the thinking at the time. I visited a slave market museum this weekend, and can say that in terms of history what he said was how many people thought at the time. I am in no way saying that is right as we all know it was not, but it was the thinking at the time.
Justice Taney's views on race relations during the eighteenth century were filtered through the lens of white supremacist ideology.

Before the codification of white supremacist ideology in the 1830s, the differences between whites and blacks were frequently discussed as developmental issues. One was further along the arc of civilization than the other. That is, under the right conditions and after an undetermined amount of time, blacks could be as civilized as whites.

The ascent of white supremacist ideology changed fundamentally the discussion of racial difference. Blacks were increasingly seen members of a proto-human subspecies, irredeemable moral degenerates who were unworthy of the rights of civilized society.*

Moreover, Justice Taney's views on the propriety of slavery were at great variance with the on-going political debates over peculiar institution. They were also demonstrably false from a historical and a contemporaneous perspective at the time he offered his opinion.

IMO, if we are going to argue in favor of a conservative approach to jurisprudence, we need to bolster that position. Otherwise, someone somewhere is to nail us. We are referencing a vision of America's historical past that is excruciatingly vulnerable to being characterized as myopic.

IMO, if this blow comes during Ms. Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, the smell of incinerated tar-marinated pachyderm will linger for decades. YMMV.

____________________________________
* A recent exploration of the 'before and after' is discussed in Nicholas Guyatt, "'The Outskirts of Our Happiness': Race and the Lure of Colonization in the Early Republic," The Journal of American History 95:4 (March 2009): 986-1011. Footnotes 48 and 49 point to important works that have informed historians' understanding of race relations during the antebellum years.

greenberetTFS

07-08-2009, 17:01

You might be interested in the following story from OneNewsNow.com:
Let's mourn the real American heroes
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Perspectives/Default.aspx?id=595914

Flags flew at half-staff this week in California's state Capitol. No, not for Michael Jackson. For Private First Class Justin Casillas.

incarcerated

07-08-2009, 17:29

In regards to the op-ed piece from the Washington Times referenced in above (http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showpost.php?p=272823&postcount=158), it is worth noting that the paper has previously offered a different view on the impropriety of racial views influencing a jurist's rulings.
.

The Wash Times 2004 piece looks like reportage, and not an editorial. It does not strike me as an attempt to legitimize or rehabilitate Taney, who died in 1864. For that matter, the Times doesn’t seem to take a position on Taney. Rather, the article is a report on a speaking occasion by Rehnquist. Rehnquist praised Taney as an advocate of states’ rights, and the article notes Rehnquist’s criticism of Taney for Dred Scott.
The article was not explicit about why Rehnquist was speaking at the Historical Society of Frederick County fundraising event. Given the venue and the occasion, Rehnquist had to find something positive to say about Taney. It would have been awkward to do otherwise, and it certainly wasn’t the time or place to criticize Dred Scott. I do not think that the article constitutes a duplicitous position or inconsistent view on the impropriety of racial views influencing a jurist's rulings on the part of the Times, or that Taney is relevant to a discussion of Sotomayor beyond the fact that they both held a racialized outlook.

The Saoirse video quotes the NRA as saying (around 2:20) that while on the 2nd Circuit Court, Sotomaor has stated that the 2nd Amendment is not a fundamental right, that it does not apply to the states, and she believes that there is sufficient basis for a total prohibition of firearms. It’s the Senator Jeff Sessions video in the selection menu.

Sigaba

07-08-2009, 20:42

The Wash Times 2004 piece looks like reportage, and not an editorial. It does not strike me as an attempt to legitimize or rehabilitate Taney, who died in 1864. For that matter, the Times doesn’t seem to take a position on Taney. Rather, the article is a report on a speaking occasion by Rehnquist. Rehnquist praised Taney as an advocate of states’ rights, and the article notes Rehnquist’s criticism of Taney for Dred Scott.
The article was not explicit about why Rehnquist was speaking at the Historical Society of Frederick County fundraising event. Given the venue and the occasion, Rehnquist had to find something positive to say about Taney. It would have been awkward to do otherwise, and it certainly wasn’t the time or place to criticize Dred Scott. I do not think that the article constitutes a duplicitous position or inconsistent view on the impropriety of racial views influencing a jurist's rulings on the part of the Times, or that Taney is relevant to a discussion of Sotomayor beyond the fact that they both held a racialized outlook.
Incarcerated--

At no time do I suggest that the Washington Times article on Rehnquist's remarks on Taney and the broadsheet's op ed on Ms. Sotomayor are, in combination, "duplicitous." There is a great difference between duplicitous behavior and inconsistent behavior.

The paper made an editorial choice--show me an article without editorial bias and I'll show you a blank piece of paper--in the 2004 article not to explore the inconsistency between Justice Rehnquist's comments at the event in question and his previously stated view on the Dred Scott decision. What ever the motivation behind this editorial choice, the Washington Times missed a good opportunity to exhibit the values it expressed in the op-ed piece you referenced.

In regards to the contention that it was not the time or place to criticize the Dred Scott decision, I respectfully but strongly disagree. [At this point, I'd express my ¡outrage! :mad: by walking away from the table...and then returning a few moments later with the next round of beverages.:p] No evidence is presented in the article suggesting that Justice Rehnquist was given any feedback on what not to say about Taney or that critical remarks would have been unwelcome.

The society's mission statement (available here (http://www.hsfcinfo.org/about/index.htm)) states that:
The Historical Society of Frederick County is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to increasing public awareness and appreciation of the history of Frederick County. The Society collects and preserves artifacts and documents for study and education, and welcomes the participation of people of all ages in sharing informative and engaging experiences that will encourage them to discover and appreciate their heritage.
This statement, the foundation's use of the term "middling classes" in its discussion of the Taney House, and the fact that the society removed a statue of Taney from the house to increase 'historical authenticity' all suggest that the society is not opposed to historical accuracy to historiographical debate. Also, an articulate man, Justice Rehnquist was not beyond offering his own take on a situation even if that gesture engendered controversy. (I am referring specifically to the racing stripes on his robe.:cool: How they howled!)

In regards to the issue of "relevance," I also respectfully disagree. The use of that word suggests that there is an agenda for a discussion upon which all stakeholders have agreed to follow. At this point, there is no such consensus in the national conversation about race.

Today's configuration of race relations is not primarily the product of what has happened (or not) since the 1960s. Racial injustice (perceived and real) did not begin (nor end) with the advent of affirmative action programs. Racial injustice will not end if those programs are dismantled. (I don't know if racial injustice would end even if those programs 'worked.')

MOO, racial injustice will continue to fester, in one form or another, until political discussions of race are consistently situated in (a) an environment of respect, patience, and empathy (which is not sympathy), (b) a more nuanced understanding of the history of American race relations, and (c) a collective willingness to accept responsibility of that history (e.g. less denial and less vindictiveness).

Frosty cold beverages and orders of wings won't hurt, either;)

incarcerated

07-09-2009, 00:34

:munchin

Sotomayor is about a lot more than race.

http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/washington-whispers/2009/07/07/nra-says-sotomayor-is-antigun.html

“…. Judge Sotomayor was a member of the panel in the case of United States v. Sanchez-Villar, where (in a summary opinion) the Second Circuit dismissed a Second Amendment challenge to New York State's pistol licensing law. That panel, in a terse footnote, cited a previous Second Circuit case to claim that "the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right." Since the precedent cited for that point is no longer valid in the wake of Heller, Judge Sotomayor should be asked whether she would take the same position today….”

http://www.nraila.org/News/Read/InTheNews.aspx?ID=12523

“Troubling is Sotomayor's record on the Second Amendment. This past January, the Second Circuit issued its opinion in Maloney v. Cuomo, which Sotomayor joined, ruling that the Second Amendment does not apply against state and local governments.”

http://reason.com/news/show/133722.html

Sonia Sotomayor on Gun Rights and Racial Preferences
Why libertarians—and everyone who believes in limited government—should worry about Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee

“…."It is settled law," Sotomayor and the Second Circuit held, "that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right."….”

http://virginiashootingsportsassociation.blogspot.com/2009/05/obama-picks-sonya-sotomayor-for-supreme.html

"....This is particularly troubling because she clearly believes courts should make law and not interpret the law. Take for instance this quote, reported by the Washington Post reported that while speaking at Duke University in 2005, Sotomayor said:

“All of the legal defense funds out there, they’re looking for people with court of appeals experience” because “the court of appeals is where policy is made.”

This will come as a surprise to those who believe that the legislative branch makes policy and law. To be fair to Ms. Sotomayor, she realized she was on tape and tried to cover her tracks by saying:

“I know this is on tape and I should never say that, because we don’t make law, I know. Um, okay. I know. I’m not promoting it, I’m not advocating it.”
The audience got her point and chuckled...."

Penn

07-09-2009, 06:31

“Troubling is Sotomayor's record on the Second Amendment. This past January, the Second Circuit issued its opinion in Maloney v. Cuomo, which Sotomayor joined, ruling that the Second Amendment does not apply against state and local governments.”

1. A filing that seeks to answer the above question that the second amendment, from a federalist perspective, is that the constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment which incorporates the due process clause as outline, and the Second Amendment, in the bill of rights is applicable to the states, as in all other issues with regards to the Bill of Rights as fundamental, and apply to the states.

2. The Fourteenth Amendment adopted after the civil war and ratified was partly in reaction to the disarment of freed slaves in the southern states; I would assume due equally to fear and as a method of denying them the right of self protection –Considered the premise and fundamental right of the Second Amendment-without arms the free slaves and their communities were attacked repeatedly.

The states responded, incorporating both the rights as outlined in the Second and the Fourteenth Amendments into their constitutions. However, there were a few which did not. NY was of them. Based on NY constitution and states’ rights the ruling answered the narrower question of a state constitutional right to assert its self, within its borders, as an equal but separate partner in the concept of dual federalism; a concept upon which we as a republic are formed.

In ruling against Maloney the Second Circuit forced the issue before the SCOTUS. As I stated earlier, I do not believe that the Courts operate in a vacuum and that at various time, by whatever means, cases are asked for or are pursued to answer contemporary divisive issues.

The ruling by the Second Circuit should not be viewed as judicial activism on the part of the Second Circuit, limiting a fundamental right, by rather as a method via the legal framework upon which we are structured, to address the issue of the right to bears arms as outlined in the Second Amendment, and contained in the Bill of Rights, applies to the States and the Federal Government. That neither the States, nor the Federal Government can infringe on that right and the SCOTUS need to clarify this and assert the Federal dominance of the Second Amendment as stated in the Bill of rights to the States.

The Second Circuit and Sotomayor as a member of that Court should be applauded for their courage in advocating the agenda of protecting our fundamental rights outlined in the Constitution; by forcing the restatement of those rights before the SCOTUS.

The case filing is below; the link to the Court’s docket and brief is here:

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/docket/docket.html

No. 08-1497
Vide 08-1521
Title: National Rifle Association of America, Inc., et al., Petitioners
v.
City of Chicago, Illinois, et al.

Docketed: June 4, 2009
Lower Ct: United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit
Case Nos.: (08-4241, 08-4243, 08-4244)
Decision Date: June 2, 2009

~~~Date~~~ ~~~~~~~Proceedings and Orders~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jun 3 2009 Petition for a writ of certiorari filed. (Response due July 6, 2009)
Jun 10 2009 Consent to the filing of amicus briefs, in support of either party or of neither party, with 7 day notification, received from counsel for the petitioners.
Jun 18 2009 Brief amicus curiae of Arms Keepers filed. VIDED.
Jun 25 2009 Order extending time to file response to petition to and including August 5, 2009.
Jul 6 2009 Brief amici curiae of State Firearm Associations filed.

Sigaba

07-09-2009, 14:07

Chef Penn--

Nicely said.

I wonder if the discussion about the Second Amendment and states rights can be broadened into a discussion of civil rights/individual liberties and states rights during Ms. Sotomayor's upcoming confirmation hearing.

Opponents of the Second Amendment may nod enthusiastically at the notion that a state may regulated issues of gun ownership.

Yet, what do those same groups say about states having a say in what constitutes a marriage? (Use California as an example.;))

This line of questioning may not derail Ms. Sotomayor's confirmation. But it may help to illustrate some of the disconnect in the Democratic party's approach to jurisprudence.:rolleyes:

The Reaper

07-09-2009, 14:16

Sigaba

07-09-2009, 14:47

Let's say that a state passed a law preventing private firearms ownership by black Americans, on the grounds that they are most likely to commit gun crimes.

Would Ms. Sotomayor feel that was a Constitutionally permitted law, as a state legislature imposed it, not the Federal government?

Why would laws restricting purchases by other individuals or characteristics of guns be any different?

Look at the Sullivan Laws in NYC. If that is not a violation of Americans' 2nd Amendment rights, I do not know what would be.

TR

TR--

What I'm suggesting is that someone on the senate judiciary committee change the trajectory of the discussion so that it is less and less about guns and the Second Amendment and more about civil rights.

My logic is that many Americans on the left side of the aisle do not associate gun ownership with the concept of civil rights. Yet, many of these same individuals would argue that they have fundamental rights to abort unborn children, to commit euthanasia, to burn the American flag, and to engage in a number of other controversial activities.

The key to this line of approach would be to avoid direct references to the Second Amendment as much as possible and to focus on issues that will wedge at the weak seams of the Democratic coalition.

If Ms. Sotomayor can be maneuvered into agreeing that states can regulate one civil right (the right to bear arms), then why cannot the others be controlled as well? If states cannot control those other 'rights,' then how can they regulate gun ownership?

If she answers "well, guns are different" then we'll be off and running. What could one mean by "different"? Does one mean that there is a hierarchy of civil rights? (No, Mr. Chairman, I will not yield. I would like a clear answer to my question.) Are there situations in the rights of individuals are trumped by the rights of states? (Do you need a recess for lunch, Judge Sotomayor?)

My best case scenario is groups across the spectrum raising concerns about Ms. Sotomayor's understanding of 'civil rights.'

Richard

07-09-2009, 15:45

If Ms. Sotomayor can be maneuvered into agreeing that states can regulate one civil right (the right to bear arms), then why cannot the others be controlled as well?

Are you saying there is no legal 'right' to deny felons gun ownership or voting privileges, or to prosecute someone for exercising their 'right' to free expression by yelling 'fire' in a crowded public place? And then there's the crowd whose 'right' to freely practice their religious belief is abridged by the outlawing of animal sacrifices. :confused:

I'm thinking this could be far more difficult than we can imagine - for both sides of the political aisle.

Here are some interesting observations from SC Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The Place of Women on the Court
Emily Bazelon, NYT, 7 Jul 2009

We talked for 90 minutes in the personal office of Ginsburg’s temporary chambers (she is soon moving to the chambers that Justice David Souter is vacating). Ginsburg, who was wearing an elegant cream-colored suit, matching pumps and turquoise earrings, spoke softly, and at times her manner was mild, but she was forceful about why she thinks Sotomayor should be confirmed and about a few of the court’s recent cases. What follows is a condensed and edited version of our interview.

(cont'd) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12ginsburg-t.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=ginsburg%20interview&st=cse

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Sigaba

07-09-2009, 17:10

Are you saying there is no legal 'right' to deny felons gun ownership or voting privileges, or to prosecute someone for exercising their 'right' to free expression by yelling 'fire' in a crowded public place? And then there's the crowd whose 'right' to freely practice their religious belief is abridged by the outlawing of animal sacrifices. :confused:

QP Richard--

No, I am not.

The intent is to get Ms. Sotomayor to speak freely about her views on the tension between civil liberties and states' rights on cutting edge-issues, not ones that have been settled.

I am hoping that such a conversation will get all interested parties a feel for how she might rule on this topic or that one but without restorting to the dead end of 'litmus tests'.

I agree with the view that Ms. Sotomayor's confirmation is exceedingly likely. If my preferred mode of questioning were to raise substantial doubts and forced the White House to expend some political capital, that would be a bonus. But I'm managing my expectations. I want the hearings:.
(a) to underscore the differing visions of civil rights between the two parties, and
(b) to demonstrate to the folks on the other side of the aisle that issues they consider clear cut are more complex than the versions they receive from moveon.org, The Daily Show, and HuffPo.

Richard

07-09-2009, 17:31

(a) to underscore the differing visions of civil rights between the two parties, and
(b) to demonstrate to the folks on the other side of the aisle that issues they consider clear cut are more complex than the versions they receive from moveon.org, The Daily Show, and HuffPo.

Were it only so - I'd watch that hearing. :D

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Sigaba

07-10-2009, 02:48

Source is here (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/08/AR2009070804211_pf.html).

Uncommon Detail Marks Rulings by Sotomayor
She Almost Oversteps Her Role, Experts Say

By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 9, 2009

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's opinions show support for the rights of criminal defendants and suspects, skepticism of corporations, and sympathy for plaintiffs alleging discrimination, an analysis of her record by The Washington Post found. And she has delivered those rulings with a level of detail considered unusual for an appellate judge.

During nearly 11 years on the federal appeals court in New York, Sotomayor has made herself an expert on subjects ranging from the intricacies of automobile mechanisms to the homicide risks posed by the city's population density. Her writings have often offered a granular analysis of every piece of evidence in criminal trials, and sometimes read as if she were retrying cases from her chambers.

Legal experts said Sotomayor's rulings fall within the mainstream of those by Democratic-appointed judges. But some were critical of her style, saying it comes close to overstepping the traditional role of appellate judges, who give considerable deference to the judges and juries that observe testimony and are considered the primary finders of fact.

"It seems an odd use of judicial time, given the very heavy caseload in the 2nd Circuit, to spend endless hours delving into the minutiae of the record," said Arthur Hellman, a University of Pittsburgh law professor and an authority on federal courts.

Adrienne Urrutia Wisenberg, a Washington criminal appellate lawyer, said appellate judges "are not in the role of reweighing the credibility of a witness. Someone's demeanor is not reflected on a transcript."

But Wisenberg said she admires Sotomayor's "tenacious trial lawyer's personality," and Dan Himmelfarb, a Washington lawyer and former clerk to conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, said Sotomayor is "extraordinarily thorough, and a judge would ordinarily be praised for writing thorough opinions."

To examine the record of Sotomayor, whose Senate confirmation hearings begin Monday, The Post reviewed all 46 of her cases in which the 2nd Circuit issued a divided ruling, nearly 900 pages of opinions. Although Sotomayor has heard about 3,000 cases, judicial scholars say split decisions provide the most revealing window into ideology because in such cases the law and precedent are often unclear, making them similar to cases heard by the Supreme Court. President Obama, who nominated Sotomayor to replace retiring Justice David H. Souter, has said Supreme Court justices will be in agreement 95 percent of the time.

Sotomayor's votes in split cases were compared with those of other judges through a database that tracks federal appellate decisions nationwide, a random sampling of 5,400 cases. The database codes decisions as "liberal" or "conservative" based on what its creator, University of South Carolina political scientist Donald Songer, says are common definitions. Votes in favor of a defendant, for example, are classified as liberal, while those supporting prosecutors are called conservative.

Sotomayor's votes came out liberal 59 percent of the time, compared with 52 percent for other judges who, like her, were appointed by Democratic presidents. Democratic appointees overall were 13 percent more liberal than Republican appointees, according to the database analysis.

Experts said the results show that Sotomayor's ascension would probably not alter the balance of a high court closely divided between conservatives and liberals such as Souter. But they also provide a more nuanced picture of the 17-year federal judge than those offered by her supporters and her critics.

The White House has portrayed Sotomayor as a tough-on-crime moderate who favors the "judicial restraint" often sought by Republicans, while conservatives call her a liberal activist whose decisions are influenced by ideology and her Latina heritage.

"She looks like a classic Democrat," Songer said. "I don't think it's fair to classify her as tough on crime. I would use the term 'moderately liberal,' not 'moderate.' But she certainly seems to be in the mainstream of Democratic judges."

The split decisions, which are heavy on the criminal and business cases that tend to dominate the Supreme Court's docket, show Sotomayor voting to overturn convictions or sentences eight times, at a rate comparable to that of other Democratic-appointed judges. Six times, she affirmed them.

In one case, Sotomayor and seven mostly Democratic colleagues voted to set free a convicted murderer who did not contest his guilt but had been tried on what the court called the wrong murder charge. In another, she joined an opinion that cited flawed jury instructions in throwing out a man's conviction for enticing someone he believed was a 13-year-old girl into sex.

And when she threw out a life prison term for a convicted heroin dealer, ordering that he be resentenced, Sotomayor wrote that judges should not show "slavish adherence" to the "literal terms" of then-mandatory sentencing guidelines when their language is flawed. The view echoed her criticism of the guidelines from the bench that became an issue in her 1997 confirmation hearings.

At those hearings, Republicans criticized Sotomayor for apologizing to a defendant for a mandatory minimum sentence she imposed and for calling the sentence an "abomination." She told senators that the apology expressed her frustration over a feature in the sentencing rules that Congress later changed, conceded she should not have used the word "abomination" and expressed general support for the guidelines.

Other cases displayed Sotomayor's support for First Amendment protections, campaign finance reforms challenged by conservatives and privacy rights. She ruled against corporations in six of eight business cases.

Although her decisions are filled with citations of the law and precedent, Sotomayor once pointed to "powerful policy considerations" in allowing a lawsuit against Visa and MasterCard to go forward, and she worried about damage to U.S.-British relations in arguing that British subjects should have access to U.S. courts. Conservatives have criticized Sotomayor for saying in 2005 that "the Court of Appeals is where policy is made. I know this is on tape, and I should never say that." The White House has defended her, saying the remark was taken out of context.

Continued below

Sigaba

07-10-2009, 02:52

Continued from above.
Sotomayor, appointed to the appeals court by President Bill Clinton, is a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan and a trial judge, and acquaintances say that background has helped shape her judicial style. She overturns lower courts at roughly the same rate as other Democratic appointees. Her writings are full of details from the trial record, especially in criminal matters, where she often meticulously analyzes witness testimony.

When she reinstated a verdict against Ford Motor Co. in 2002 in the lawsuit of a woman who said her van suddenly accelerated without her touching the gas pedal, Sotomayor wrote that one witness's testimony "requires two simultaneous malfunctions in the cruise control circuitry. The first is an open ground connection to the speed amplifier, resulting from a loose or broken wire."

Last year, in voting to overturn a firearms defendant's sentence, Sotomayor joined a Democratic appointee and a Republican in analyzing whether New York City's dense population puts bystanders at greater risk from gunfire than those elsewhere. She wrote a separate dissent, acknowledging that the trial judge's opinion on the subject was "detailed'' but citing government reports and newspaper articles to argue it was "insufficient" to support a sentence above the range recommended by federal guidelines.

A Republican appointee who disagreed wrote that "appellate courts are not factfinders. . . . I do not understand it to be our role . . . to engage in this kind of dissection of the empirical evidence cited by the district court. Nor is it to identify competing studies or news articles pointing in other directions."

In 2004, Sotomayor appeared to go beyond the facts established at trial in arguing that two teenage girls were illegally strip-searched at Connecticut juvenile detention facilities. Their lawsuit against the state was dismissed by a federal judge but reinstated in an opinion written by a Democratic 2nd Circuit appointee, who said four of the strip searches at issue were unlawful but four others were legal.

Sotomayor dissented, arguing that all were illegal and blasting any strip search as "severely intrusive." Citing documents from pretrial discovery, she broke down all 34 strip searches at the facilities in which contraband was found on a prisoner from 1995 to 2000 -- searches that were not part of the lawsuit. She concluded that there was "absolutely no evidence that suspicionless strip searches were necessary."

(The Supreme Court last month voiced skepticism of strip-searching teenage girls, ruling 8 to 1 that Arizona school officials violated the constitutional rights of a 13-year-old girl when they strip-searched her on suspicion that she might be hiding ibuprofen in her underwear.)

Hellman, the law professor, called Sotomayor's approach "a kind of carpet-bombing, a relentless mustering of facts. She goes well beyond what is necessary for the case and is determined not to just defeat the other side, but to annihilate it."Sotomayor's style is consistent even when she finds against defendants, such as when she affirmed the conviction of a child pornography defendant in 2004. A U.S. district court judge had concluded after an evidentiary hearing that the man was innocent but denied his petition because it was filed too late.

Even though she had decided the core issue -- the conviction -- Sotomayor broke down the witnesses and testimony at the judge's hearing. She concluded that his finding of innocence was "clearly erroneous," even as she said that district courts "are generally best placed to evaluate testimony in light of the witnesses' demeanor."

A fellow Democratic appointee, Judge Rosemary S. Pooler, dissented. Sotomayor's opinion, she wrote, was based on "speculations and conjectures" and disregarded the judge's "role as the finder-of-facts."

"It is inappropriate in all but the most extraordinary cases for this Court to second-guess a district court's credibility findings," Pooler concluded. "The majority's dissection of the district court's decision departs from our precedents and wrongly supplants the lower court's assessment of the evidence with its own factual inferences, never having seen or heard any of the testimony that it now seeks to discredit."

Database editor Sarah Cohen contributed to this report.
Questions that arise from this article:

Why does Ms. Sotomayor approach her job in this fashion? (Is her work style really a hold over from her days in Manhattan doing criminal law?)
How would her highly developed work ethic fit with those of her colleagues on the Supreme Court?
Will her attention to detail help or hinder the Supreme Court's ability to do its job in a timely and economical manner?

Penn

07-10-2009, 04:39

TR, I will attempt to answer your question.

The restriction of ownership due to race would immediately be seen as unconstitutional; as outline in the 1st, 2nd, 5th, and 14th, amendments; the restriction would be challenged in the courts and overturned. The NAACP would be a plaintiff in the case.

The question of Justice Sotomayor’s feeling, inclination, or whatever personal predicates she may possess, would not be a consideration or an issue. She would be forced to follow the Case Law.

To preempt the question of the Justice’s supposed judicial activism and to further emphasize the contention that case law would set the precedent in deciding such a case; I think we need to define a few terms of what we mean by judicial activism.

Judicial activism is viewed by many, as Judges interpreting the constitution to their whims and creating law in the process. What it really defines is the concept of judicial pragmatism; which see’s/views/ask us to interpret the constitution as a “living document”. This concept is the consideration upon which the Constitution was first written. In the draft of the constitution by the “Committee of Detail” charged with writing and research of the document made the following observation:

Inserting this statement in the preamble of the constitutional convention:

In the draught of a fundamental constitution, two things deserve attention:

1. To insert essential principles only; lest the operations of government should be clogged by rendering those provisions permanent and unalterable, which ought to be accommodated to times and events: and
2. to use simple and precise language, and general propositions, according to the example of the constitutions of the several states

This is viewed as the “Original Intent” of the Constitution and is the foundation upon which the interpretative term of “Judicial Activism” is unsuitable to describe “the living Constitution" as being altered by judicial fancy.

It is judicial pragmatism and is one of the base considerations that examples judicial review relating to contemporary issues. Can you imagine the many questions of just the 1st amendment being addressed by 1830 moral standards vs the standards of information that exist today; the issue of Darwinism vs Creationism, a prime example of interpretive necessity.

Penn

07-10-2009, 05:12

Sigaba, I do not agree with this: My best case scenario is groups across the spectrum raising concerns about Ms. Sotomayor's understanding of 'civil rights.

Civil Rights was the result of Federal activism/Federalism; by applying the concept of incorporation to the states.

Incorporation is defined as the American legal doctrine by which portions of the Bill of Rights are applied to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Thus Civil Rights are a fundamental right as outlined in the first ten amendments of the constitution.
In my mind the argument is framed around support for those rights, as stated in the Bill of Rights, being fundamental to personal freedom.

The Reaper

07-10-2009, 06:56

Counsel

07-10-2009, 09:30

What other inalienable Constitutional rights are legally able to be denied based on where I live or happen to be standing?

TR

Don’t get me started on that. How about the inalienable right to vote for the CINC and to vote for my Senators and Representatives in Congress :mad:

The Reaper

07-10-2009, 09:48

Don’t get me started on that. How about the inalienable right to vote for the CINC and to vote for my Senators and Representatives in Congress :mad:

The Constitution gives that right to residents of the States, not territories. I thought that the people of PR wanted to be a separate Commonwealth?

They didn't want to be Americans when the Navy and Marines were training on Vieques. As a matter of fact, I thought at that time that the Independentistas were going to take over and declare soverignty. Artillery units of the PR Guard had to go to CONUS to train on their guns.

Do you really want to pay Federal taxes on top of the Commonwealth taxes? My friends who had to do that were stunned at the tax burden.

I would say that you are behind DC in regards to the right to elect reps to the U.S. Congress.

TR

Penn

07-10-2009, 12:10

TR,
To answer your first question: Then what about restrictions based on where you live?

Your valid contemporary question concerning your Constitutional Rights to “own, carry and “Bear Arms” is guaranteed under the 2nd Amendment of the constitution by the Federal Government; and is considered inherently, a fundamental right of a citizen to defend himself, his home, and his property. It was included by, and understood by the founders, as the right that assured all other rights, that cannot be infringed upon. The “Bill of Rights”, the first Ten amendments are “Incorporated” onto the States; that is, as they are appllied to the federal Government, they also are to the States.

But that was not always the case, and this is where the conflict begins and continues between the Federal Governments “enumerated Powers” and those powers reserve for the state and known as “Reserve Powers”.

The Dual Federalism that forms our Government is a concept of equal partnership, which allows each to be supreme within their own spheres. Thus, each state has written their constitution. As I stated earlier, NY did not include the concepts outlined in the 2nd Amendment in their Constitution, when the 14th Amendment was enacted and adopted by the states after the civil war.

The first case which addressed the issue of “Incorporation” came after the Civil War. In U.S. of A vs, Cruikshank (1875), The SC ruling found that the “Bill of Rights” did not apply to the states. This ruling could be interpreted racist; up to 300 blacks died, most after surrendering; compared to the deaths of 3 whites. The decision centered on matters addressing 1st amendment issues, as the right to assemble. It overturned the convictions of two defendants in the case. The Court did not incorporate the “Bill of Rights”, to the states and found that the 1st Amendment right to assembly "was not intended to limit the powers of the State governments in respect to their own citizens" and that the 2nd Amendment "has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government." (1)

The case was heard after the adoption of the 14th amendment by the states. The position of the government as it now relates to the “Bill of Rights” is the “Due Process Clause” of the 14th Amendment, from a Federalist perspective, applies to the states and those rights are “Incorporated”.
There are several other important cases which address this issue they are:
United States v. Cruikshankk (1875), Presser v. Illinois (1886), United States v. Miller (1939). (4)

The most recent which we all followed, occurred on June 26, 2008, in a 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the federal appeals court ruling, striking down the D.C. gun law. Justice Scalia, stated, "In sum, we hold that the District's ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense ... We affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeals.” (2)This ruling upholds the first federal appeals court ruling ever to void a law on Second Amendment grounds. (3)

The Court based its reasoning on the grounds:

• that the operative clause of the Second Amendment—"the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"—is controlling and refers to a pre-existing right of individuals to possess and carry personal weapons for self defense and intrinsically for defense against tyranny, based on the bare meaning of the words, the usage of "the people" elsewhere in the Constitution, and historical materials on the clause's original public meaning;
• that the prefatory clause, which announces a purpose of a "well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State", comports with the meaning of the operative clause and refers to a well-trained citizen militia, which "comprised all males physically capable of acting in concert for the common defense", as being necessary to the security of a free polity;
• that historical materials support this interpretation, including "analogous arms-bearing rights in state constitutions" at the time, the drafting history of the Second Amendment, and interpretation of the Second Amendment "by scholars, courts, and legislators" through the late nineteenth century;
• that none of the Supreme Court's precedents forecloses the Court's interpretation, specifically United States v. Cruikshankk (1875), Presser v. Illinois (1886), nor United States v. Miller (1939). (4)

However, "[l]ike most, the Second Amendment is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose." The Court's opinion, although refraining from an exhaustive analysis of the full scope of the right, "should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." (4)

Therefore, the District of Columbia's handgun ban is unconstitutional, as it "amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of 'arms' that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense". Similarly, the requirement that any firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock is unconstitutional, as it "makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense".(4)

1. American Government, James Q Wilson & John J Dilulio, Houghton Mifflin 2008
2. District of Columbia, et al., Petitioners v. Dick Anthony Heller. 554 U.S. (2008).
3. Greg Stohr. Individual Gun Rights Protected, Top U.S. Court Says, Bloomberg News, 2008-06-26.
4. District of Columbia, et al., Petitioners v. Dick Anthony Heller. 554 U.S. (2008).

Penn

07-11-2009, 04:20

TR, In the process of answering your second question, I came across this little ditty: "Alaska and Vermont do not require any license in order to carry concealed weapons in public places, but there are laws in these states prohibiting concealed weapons in certain places" (e.g., in Alaska it is not permitted to carry a weapon, concealed or otherwise, into a bar or tavern). (1)

Considering the general sentiment here with regards to Vermonts political leanings; I thought how interesting is it that they follow through and embrace the entire "Bill of Rights" as those here, who also have the same view point.

1. http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0812/p01s02-ussc.html

Penn

07-11-2009, 06:33

In the attempt to understand and answer your second question, which I did not consider possible, I now believe that the answer is based in the fundamental structure of our republic.

Your question asks the following:
Why should a NYC resident not have the same Constitutional rights as an upstate resident or a PA resident? If my NC driver's license (which is a privilege not listed in the Bill of Rights) is good in NYC, why is my CCW not good there as well?

The answer is the concept of dual federalism; which was seeded at the constitutional convention, to appease those founders and citizens in the late 1700 that feared a strong, or distance central Government. At issue before the states was autonomy. The anti-federalist believed that the only way in which they could secure their freedoms was by limiting national power, power that would expand and absorb responsibility rightly belonging to the states. They believed that congress would exceed its charter, the president would be the CIC of a large standing army, etc. (some would argue that prophecy has occurred). The anti-federalist implicitly felt that the power of government should reside in the hands of the state legislatures.

It is not till after the Civil War, not brought about by the pedestrian claim of southern slavery, but by the Southern States claim of Nullification; whereby the state could declare null and void any federal law that in its view violated the States rights. The Federal Government first taxed (congressional excess) the southern States, and then they restricted the slave trade. (National Interference) The Southern States declare it unconstitutional.

What emerges out of this cataclysm tragedy is a debate that attempts to address state and federal rights. Resulting in a doctrine "dual federalism" that confirms the supremacy of the national government in its sphere and the states equally supreme rights in their sphere, and that each of these two centers of power should be kept separate.

Under Article 1, Section 8 of the constitution the Federal Government employs the commerce clause to establish these distinctions.
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among several states; and among the Indian Tribes.

Congress regulates interstate, States regulate intrastate.

This of course leads to each state having its own constitution and sovereignty. Creating the confusion of state gun laws: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_(by_state)) and the conflict with the 2nd Amendment of the constitution.

That said, and to answer your question plainly, the NY resident does have the same Constitutional 2nd Amendment rights as an upstate resident. The conflict is that the states, as equal partners, having their own constitution and sovereignty, can also create laws. These laws, if in contrast to the constitution are argued in order of importance: “The 1st category, collectively known as rights-based arguments, consist of Second Amendment arguments, state constitution arguments, right of self-defense arguments, and security against tyranny and invasion arguments. Public policy arguments, the 2nd category of arguments, revolve around the importance of a militia, the reduction of gun violence and firearm deaths, and also can include arguments regarding security against foreign invasions.” (1)

This of course leads to the concept of "Incorporated" in that regard the following is of interest : This amendment (2nd) has been incorporated against the states within the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and has not been incorporated against the states within the jurisdiction of the Second (Justice Stomayor's) and Seventh Circuit Courts of Appeals. (2)

(1) Prof. Kates' Stanford University course "American Violence: The Gun Connection" 1990
(2) UPenn Law Journal

Richard

07-11-2009, 10:39

Key Questions for Sonia Sotomayor
Deborah O'Malley and Robert Alt, The Heritage Foundation, 10 Jul 2009

Since Judge Sonia Sotomayor was nominated for the Supreme Court by President Barack Obama, she has received fierce criticism for a number of her public statements and court opinions that reveal a troubling judicial philosophy. She has questioned whether judges can and should set aside personal bias, mocked the idea that judges do not "make law," and argued that judges of certain ethnicities or a particular gender will reach superior conclusions possibly due to "physiological differences" in logic and reasoning.

In addition to concerns about her judicial philosophy, serious questions have been raised about Sotomayor's respect for judicial procedure. She has displayed a tendency to completely ignore or bury arguments she disfavors, treating unsettled statutory and constitutional questions as frivolous legal claims that merit no serious discussion. Equally troubling is her approach to constitutional rights: In several cases she has denied rights that are specifically protected by the Constitution while giving little or no justification thereof.

Next week, Senators will begin the "advice and consent" process. Given these concerns about her judicial philosophy, fairness on the bench, and fidelity to the Constitution, Senators should ask Judge Sotomayor the following ten questions.

Question #1: Policy-Making from the Bench

During a Duke University panel discussion in 2005, you made a statement that raises grave concern as to whether you believe that the role of a judge is a limited one. In that speech, you stated: "All of the legal defense funds out there, they're looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is--Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don't 'make law.'"

Though you claimed that you were not "promoting" or "advocating" the practice, it is quite clear, based on your flippant tone, which invoked laughter from the audience, that you were mocking the idea that judges do not "make law."[1]

Statements from your other speeches support this interpretation. You have unabashedly embraced the idea that judges should not hold back when tempted to alter the law in order to address some perceived societal need: "Our society would be strait-jacketed were not the courts, with the able assistance of the lawyers, constantly overhauling the law and adapting it to the realities of ever-changing social, industrial and political conditions."[2] Your idea of a "strait-jacketed" society ignores the existence of an entire branch that is actually constitutionally empowered to change the law to address society's needs: the legislature.

Do you still believe that judges should be overhauling the law and making policy? If not, when did you change your position, and why did you say and write these things in 2005?

Question #2: Patriotic Bias?

When litigants stand before a judge in a courtroom, they should be confident that their judge is approaching the case without harboring any pre-conceived personal bias. Your speeches reveal a disturbing skepticism as to whether this basic element of the rule of law is possible--or even desirable. In a 2001 speech at Berkeley School of Law, you advanced the idea that legal interpretations are inevitably and unavoidably influenced by one's own experience and cultural background and that "impartiality" is just an "aspiration." You stated that you wonder whether the goal of impartiality is "possible in all or even in most cases."[3]

In the speech, you went even further to suggest that the impossibility of impartiality is actually somehow a benefit to this country: "I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society."[4] Under your theory, it is somehow patriotic to embrace one's own personal biases.[5]

Yet as a judge, you took an oath to "administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and [to] faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent" on you under the Constitution.[6]

Do you believe that following the judges' oath of office is a disservice to society? Do you believe that you are doing a disservice to the law if you impartially discharge your duties in a completely impartial manner?

Question #3: Respecting Judicial Procedure

While your statements about the undesirability of impartial judging raise concern, what is even more alarming is that you seem to have put this belief into practice in several cases. In these cases, you displayed a tendency to give little or no consideration to serious constitutional and statutory issues, and in one case doing so in a way that appeared to be calculated to prevent further review (and subsequent reversal) of the case. This calls into question your ability to perform one of the most basic duties of a judge: to respect judicial procedure, and to give a fair and adequate hearing to all arguments and parties.

In the case of Ricci v. DeStefano, your three-judge Second Circuit panel addressed a racial discrimination suit brought by a group of New Haven firefighters who were denied promotions on account of race. Despite the unsettled constitutional and statutory issues in this case, your panel stated its conclusion in one paragraph, doing so in a summary order and then withdrawing it and issuing yet another one-paragraph opinion, this time a per curiam opinion.

On review, the Supreme Court found that your panel wrongly concluded that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not violated when the city of New Haven threw out the results of a race-neutral firefighter promotional exam due to a low pass rate among minorities.

Not only did the Supreme Court find fault with the decision your panel reached in this case, but all nine justices agreed that your one-paragraph summary order was insufficient.[7]

The Supreme Court justices were not the first to point out this error. In his dissent from denial of rehearing en banc, Judge Jose Cabranes, a Clinton appointee on your circuit, explained that your panel's refusal to address the constitutional issues in the case was entirely unjustified. He noted that the "core issue presented by this case ... isnot addressed by any precedent of the Supreme Court or our Circuit,"[8] and "where significant questions of unsettled law are raised on appeal ... a failure to address those questions--or even recognize their existence--should not be the approved modus operandi of the U.S. Court of Appeals."[9]

You displayed a similarly dismissive approach in your opinion in Maloney v. Cuomo, in which you found that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. In a scant 11 words, which failed to provide even a scintilla of reasoning for your conclusion, your panel declared that a state statute restricting possession of weapons does not implicate a fundamental right.

Do you believe that your treatment of these cases was appropriate, particularly considering the fact that the Supreme Court not only found the case important enough to hear but also reversed you? Why did you refuse to address the serious legal issues at stake in these cases?

Question #4: The "Empathy" Standard

President Obama has stated several times the importance of finding a nominee who displays empathy in judging. Legitimate criticisms have been raised concerning this standard, including questions as to how a judge should go about deciding which litigant is deserving of sympathy.

In some cases, all of the parties are sympathetic. In other cases, none are. In still other cases, the law may be unambiguously on the side of a party who is less sympathetic. If empathy is the guiding principle, how is a judge to decide these cases? And how do we separate empathy from personal bias?[10]

While empathy divorced from law is a dubious way to decide cases, you were arguably presented with the opportunity to display your empathy in the case of Ricci v. DeStefano. The plaintiff in the case, Frank Ricci, is a learning disabled firefighter who, as you recall, put considerably more time into preparing for the lieutenant's exam given his disability. Because of his dyslexia, Ricci had a friend record his exam textbooks into a tape recorder and spent every spare hour studying. After taking such great strides to overcome his disadvantage, he ranked sixth in the competition for eight lieutenant spots but was nonetheless denied the promotion on account of race.

Do you agree with President Obama that empathy is a proper way to decide cases? If so, why was Ricci unworthy of your empathy--or even of a full opinion from your court?

(cont'd) http://www.heritage.org/Research/LegalIssues/wm2534.cfm

Richard

07-11-2009, 10:42

Key Questions for Sonia Sotomayor(cont'd)

Question #5: Physiological Differences and Identity Politics

You have stated that gender and national origin "may and will make a difference in our judging." You stated that these differences could be due to cultural experience or because of "basic differences in logic and reasoning." You further stated your hope that a Latina woman "with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

There has been a great deal of discussion about the so-called "wise Latina woman" quote, but the defenses to date have been inaccurate or insufficient. The White House responded that you misspoke, but this was shown to be false by the fact that the statement was made in a published speech, and by the subsequent revelation that you had made that very same speech on at least seven separate occasions. Later explanations suggest that you did not mean that the opinion would be superior but that you were simply lauding a diversity of opinion. However, that is plainly not what you said, both in print and verbally, again more than seven times.

Men who have suggested that there may be physiological differences between genders have received an onslaught of criticism, in some cases being led to resign from their positions. For example, when Larry Summers, the current director of the White House's National Economic Council, suggested that "innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers,"[11] many of those who are currently defending your statements expressed such outrage that he was forced to resign his post of dean at Harvard University. Nancy Hopkins, the MIT biologist who famously walked out of the Summers talk and remarked, "I would've either blacked out or thrown up,"[12] praised you in an Editor's Selection comment to a New York Times article. She wrote that "you deserve all of this success and more," and that "this is the American dream come true."[13]

Do you believe that there are physiological differences between ethnicities that affect reasoning? Why should we read the word better in your description of the decision of a Latina compared to other sexes and ethnicities--a word that you used repeatedly in print and verbally--as something other than what it actually means?

Question #6: Second Amendment Rights

In Maloney v. Cuomo, you joined a three-judge panel concluding that the Second Amendment right to bear arms does not apply to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. You also argued that the right to bear arms is not a "fundamental right."

In your incredibly short opinion, your panel cites Presser v. Illinois as the basis for its claim that "it is settled law ... that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on [the right to bear arms]." Your panel neglects to mention, however, that Presser was decided before the courts began incorporating the Bill of Rights through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller describes as "the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases."[14]

More disturbingly, your panel summarily stated in a scant 11-word conclusion that statutes restricting possession of weapons do not implicate a fundamental right--something that no court has done since the Supreme Court affirmed an individual Second Amendment right in Heller.

Why did you fail to even consider the sort of inquiry that the Supreme Court said is required by the Fourteenth Amendment in your decision stripping Second Amendment protection from citizens in the Second Circuit? Do you believe that statutes restricting possession of weapons do not even implicate fundamental rights? How does that view comport with the text of the Second Amendment?

Question #7: Legal Realism

Legal realism, the theory responsible for the rise of judicial activism, is based on the idea that law has no objective meaning and must constantly evolve with the changing needs of society. The problem with legal realism is that both society's "needs" and the seemingly legal solutions to these needs turn out to be--interestingly enough--in synch with the political or policy preferences of the judges who advance this theory. Legal realism mocks the idea that judges simply apply law to cases as mere subterfuge for what really occurs: the judiciary essentially functioning as another political branch, judicially amending the Constitution and other laws as the judges see fit, regardless of what the American people think.

Your academic work has revealed obvious support for this corrosive theory. For example, you have stated:

"Our society would be strait-jacketed were not the courts, with the able assistance of the lawyers, constantly overhauling the law and adapting it to the realities of ever-changing social, industrial and political conditions."[15] "Yet law must be more or less impermanent, experimental and therefore not nicely calculable. Much of the uncertainty of law is not an unfortunate accident: it is of immense social value."[16]

Do you believe that it is the role of judges and the courts to change the laws if they believe the law is outdated or needs changing? What prevents a judge from simply implementing her policy preferences in the place of legislature, and what recourse do citizens have when an unelected judge gets the policy question wrong?

Question #8: Importing Foreign Law

In your April 2009 address to the Puerto Rican chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), you commented that "international law and foreign law will be very important in the discussion of how to think about the unsettled issues in our own legal system."[18] Though you stated that you do not advocate the use of international and foreign law in American courts, you nevertheless endorsed the consideration of international and foreign law by judges in order to better inform their decisions. As Heritage Foundation scholar Steven Groves has explained, there is little, if any, distinction between these terms, for by considering international and foreign law, one necessarily uses it.[19] Even though you may advocate its use only as persuasive authority, this does not substantially clarify your position, because no judge entertains the notion that foreign law should be regarded as binding authoritative law in the U.S. legal system. There is indeed reason for concern if international and foreign law is used even persuasively, for it could undermine America's own unique laws and written Constitution, which have been enacted by its own people.

You also stated in your ACLU of Puerto Rico speech that "unless American courts are more open to discussing the ideas raised by foreign cases, by international cases, that we are going to lose influence in the world."[20] This is troubling, because the Constitution does not entrust the Supreme Court with influencing and earning the approval of foreign courts. The duties of international relations are specifically given by the U.S. Constitution to the two political branches of the government, especially the executive.[21] For the judiciary to take on these duties would be for it to insert itself into the realm of policymaking--thus divorcing itself further from its role as a legal institution that interprets and is bound by text.

Apart from treaties that incorporate foreign law into U.S. domestic law, why do you think it is a good idea for judges to consider foreign law in deciding domestic law cases?

Question #9: Felon Voting

The Fourteenth Amendment specifically allows the states to abridge or deny the voting rights of those who partake in "rebellion, or other crime." In the case of Hayden v. Pataki--a case that included among it's petitioners a double cop-killer--the Second Circuit affirmed this view and further concluded that disenfranchising felons does not violate the Voting Rights Act (VRA).

In your brief three-paragraph dissent, you dismissed the majority's detailed analysis of the VRA's textual meaning and legislative history, arguing that section 2 of the VRA is "unambiguous" and "subjects felony disenfranchisement and all other voting qualifications to its coverage." As any law student could tell you, if indeed the statute were this clear and so clearly violated the Fourteenth Amendment, it would be void. But it is not so clear that the VRA is as broad as you say, particularly if one takes into account specific statements made in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Reports and on the Senate floor regarding the VRA, which explicitly recognized that felon disenfranchisement laws would not be effected by the VRA.[22]

Do you believe that the VRA guarantees the rights of felons to vote? Do you believe that the VRA supercedes the right of states to deny the vote to criminals, as it is guaranteed in the Fourteenth Amendment?

Question #10: Death Penalty

As a member of a three-person task force of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, you signed a memo objecting to the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York. The memo demonstrated hostility to the death penalty, equating it with racism: "Capital punishment is associated with evident racism in our society. The number of minorities and the poor executed or awaiting execution is out of proportion to their numbers in the population."[23]

Given your clear views against the death penalty, and your statements suggesting that judges cannot avoid expressing bias in most cases, why should Americans believe that you will not express your anti-death penalty bias on the Supreme Court?

Pete

07-11-2009, 13:07

Sotomayor backers urge reporters to probe New Haven firefighter

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/71660.html

"WASHINGTON — Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who's at the center of Sotomayor's most controversial ruling.

On the eve of Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the "troubled and litigious work history" of firefighter Frank Ricci. ........"

Nothing to see here folks, move along - just the left being the left.

Sigaba

07-12-2009, 15:32

Source is here (http://cnn.site.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Poll%3A+Nearly+half+support+Sotomayor%27s+co nfirmation+-+CNN.com&expire=-1&urlID=406472612&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2009%2FPOLITICS%2F0 7%2F10%2Fsotomayor.poll%2Findex.html&partnerID=211911).

The poll results, in PDF format, are available here (http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/09/sotopoll0710.cnn.pdf).

Poll: Nearly half support Sotomayor's confirmation

By Paul Steinhauser
CNN Deputy Political Director

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Days before the start of Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, a new national poll indicates that by a narrow margin, Americans would like the Senate to confirm her as the next Supreme Court justice.

In a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Friday, 47 percent of people questioned would like to see the Senate vote in favor of Sotomayor's confirmation, with 40 percent opposed and 13 percent unsure.

Sotomayor, a New York federal appeals court judge, was nominated by President Obama in May to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter.

The poll suggests a partisan divide, with nearly seven in 10 Democrats supporting Sotomayor's confirmation, Independents split, and nearly two out of three Republicans opposing Senate confirmation. Read the poll (pdf)

"Republican opposition to Sotomayor's confirmation is a higher level of opposition from the party out of power than any Supreme Court nominee has faced in the past two decades," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

Only 32 percent of Republicans opposed Ruth Ginsburg's 1993 nomination by President Bill Clinton to the high court, Holland said.

"In 2005, when it was the GOP's turn to appoint justices, only 35 percent of Democrats opposed John Roberts, and 46 percent of Democrats opposed Samuel Alito the following year," Holland said. "And even when Bush nominated Harriet Miers, opposition among Democrats to her confirmation hit only 53 percent."

The poll also indicates that Americans are split over whether senators are justified in voting against Sotomayor, based solely on her stand on the issues.

Americans seem to agree that the confirmation hearings in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which begin Monday, could turn into a partisan battle.

Six out of 10 said a major fight between Democrats and Republicans will occur, with 38 percent saying that the hearings will be a relatively easy process with bipartisan agreement.

The percentage of those who would like to see Sotomayor confirmed in the CNN poll is lower than in other national surveys released in the past few weeks.

"One possible reason why the CNN poll shows less support for Sotomayor than other recent polls is a difference in the question wording," Holland said. "Polls by other organizations have described Sotomayor as Barack Obama's choice for the Supreme Court. But in order to make historical comparisons, the CNN poll used a question dating back to 1987 that does not mention the president's name."

Americans can be swayed by a familiar name, in this case Obama, when questioned about someone who has not been in the public eye, Holland said.

"Some of Obama's popularity may have rubbed off onto Sotomayor in polls conducted by other organizations," Holland said. "Ultimately, however, Supreme Court nominees rise or fall on their own merits."

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey was conducted from June 26 to 28, with 1,026 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
I would have thought that support for Ms. Sotomayor's confirmation among Democrats would be much higher.

Notwithstanding my own preferences on how the GOP approaches the hearings, I now wonder if a partisan brawl might offer some political advantages.

Chef Penn-- I do not understand the reasons why you disagree with my 'best outcome' pie in the sky wish.:confused: Might we be addressing slightly different issues?

My intention was to talk about a desirable political consequence, not so much the finer points that you detailed.

Richard

07-13-2009, 07:36

Questions for Judge Sotomayor
OpEds, NYT, 12 Jul 2009

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, is scheduled to appear today at a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Op-Ed editors asked seven legal experts to pose the questions they would like to hear the nominee answer.

1. Advocacy of “states’ rights” has long been considered a hallmark of conservative judicial philosophy. Recently, however, we have seen the advent of what might be called “blue states’ rights,” as progressive states seek to provide greater consumer, environmental and antidiscrimination protection than the federal government, while business seeks to strike down such measures as pre-empted by federal law.

What is your view of the role of federalism in our constitutional system? And how has that view affected your rulings in the cases that have come before you concerning whether federal laws pre-empt state laws or causes of action?

2. The Supreme Court has issued four major decisions since 9/11 invalidating the president’s and Congress’s efforts to detain and try “enemy combatants” according to procedures that depart from traditions of military justice and the rule of law. And yet since 9/11, not a single enemy combatant has been tried to judgment by military tribunal or released over executive branch objection. How will history view the Supreme Court’s decisions in this area — as a success for the principles they announced or a failure for the results they achieved? What is your view of the role of the court in ensuring the separation of powers? Has that view varied in times of national emergency?

— KATHLEEN M. SULLIVAN, a professor of law at Stanford

1. If confirmed, you will be the only member of the Supreme Court who was a federal trial judge. You know that the factual findings of a trial judge or jury are based on a carefully assembled body of evidence. In your opinion, to what degree is an appeals judge confined by that evidential record in reaching decisions? When, if ever, is it appropriate for an appellate judge to rely upon other, extrinsic sources — like social science studies, polls or academic writings — in deciding a case?

2. When a court interprets an international treaty or deals with an international dispute, it is not uncommon to consider international law. More controversial is the practice of some judges to look to foreign law for assistance in interpreting provisions of purely American law, like the Constitution. Putting aside English law that existed at the time the Constitution was framed, what use, if any, should be made of foreign law in interpreting the Constitution?

3. From time to time a judge confronts a situation where a fair reading of the law points to a decision that conflicts with the judge’s personal views or sympathies. Please give three examples of judgments you rendered based on interpretation of the law, even though the outcomes were at odds with your individual views or sympathies.

— MICHAEL CHERTOFF, a secretary of homeland security under George W. Bush

1. Many of the questions you will be asked during the hearing will be designed to elicit your view on cases likely to come before you on the court. Over the years, nominees have handled these questions in different ways. No member of the current court responded to these questions in any detail. Is predicting the votes of potential justices a proper role for either the president or the Senate? If not, what are the factors you believe should be taken into account?

2. Even though you cannot give us your view on cases likely to come before you if you are confirmed, we nevertheless need to understand your view of the Supreme Court as an institution. Could you please tell us which justice, excluding current members of the court, you most admire, and why?

3. There was a time when the majority and the dissenters on the court went out of their way to be respectful toward each other. Even in so divisive a case as Miranda v. Arizona in 1966, the dissenters, who thought the result simply terrible, seemed to write more in sorrow than in anger. Now some members have taken to sniping at each other regularly in their opinions, particularly in the footnotes. What do you think is the cause of this trend? If confirmed, what might you do to help stop it?

— STEPHEN L. CARTER, a professor of law at Yale and the author of the forthcoming “Jericho’s Fall”

1. Given your public remarks about the importance of judges showing compassion, do you believe there is a difference between doing justice and applying the law?

2. Some overseas critics have questioned the legality of United States government policies on the war on terrorism. Should America’s standing in the world, to the extent it may be affected by the outcome of a case, ever inform a judicial decision?

3. How important is emphasis on precedent in Supreme Court decision-making? Under what circumstances would you vote to overturn an earlier Supreme Court opinion? Would it be enough that you did not view the case to have been rightly decided? Does it matter how well known it is or how much public reliance there has been on the decision?

— ALBERTO GONZALES, the United States attorney general from 2005 to 2007

1. When you said you hoped that “a wise Latina” would make better judicial decisions, did you mean it as a pleasantry aimed at people who had invited you to speak about diversity or will you now defend the idea that decision-making on the Supreme Court is enhanced by an array of justices representing different backgrounds?

2. If a diverse array of justices is desirable, should we not be concerned that if you are confirmed, six out of the nine justices will be Roman Catholics, or is it somehow wrong to start paying attention to the extreme overrepresentation of Catholicism on the court at the moment when we have our first Hispanic nominee?

— ANN ALTHOUSE, a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin

1. The last two nominees told the Judiciary Committee that they could decide difficult constitutional cases just by applying the law. Critics say this is silly: often the text and history of crucial constitutional clauses and the court’s past decisions aren’t decisive either way, so that judges can interpret those clauses only by asking which reading, in their opinion, is best. They must finally rely on their own political convictions in making that judgment. Do you agree with these critics?

2. You have been criticized for your vote in the New Haven firefighters case. The case raised the crucial question of whether a city or state can use race-sensitive policies, short of quotas, to reduce racial inequality and tension. Do you see any moral or constitutional objection, in principle, to such policies?

— RONALD DWORKIN, a professor of law at New York University

1. The Constitution is “not a static but rather a living document,” Barack Obama wrote in “The Audacity of Hope,” echoing Thomas Jefferson, “and must be read in the context of an ever-changing world.” Do you agree? If so, how would you apply this idea to specific cases?

2. Do you believe that the Supreme Court has the constitutional authority to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional? Would you be in favor of a constitutional amendment establishing or rejecting once and for all the power of an unelected Supreme Court to veto acts of our elected Congress?

3. Throughout the court’s history, it has often lagged behind the times, as lifetime appointees adhered to outdated ideologies and attitudes. Would you be in favor of requiring justices to retire at the age of 70?

— JAMES MacGREGOR BURNS, the author of “Packing the Court: The Rise of Judicial Power and the Coming Crisis of the Supreme Court”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/opinion/13sotomayor.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=all

Saoirse

07-13-2009, 08:51

And thus it starts... proceedings have been interrupted by a protestor at about 10:45 am. I couldn't make out what was being said but they removed the man promptly. Just waiting to see what more will transpire. .....And the lines are being drawn.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/13/senate-starts-sotomayors-historic-nomination/

Sigaba

07-13-2009, 12:20

And the lines are being drawn.

MOO, the Republicans are not doing well with their opening statements in contrast to the Democrats. The Democrats are benefiting from their superior numbers and what appears to be a high level of coordination. The GOP members seem to offering their opening statements piecemeal so there is a lot of redundancy in their remarks.

In combination, the Democrats are offering a more detailed framework for their approach to the hearings than are the Republicans.:(

ETA: Senator Frankin is going to be trouble. His skill set as an entertainer / actor enable him to communicate his points with greater affability and clarity than his peers.

Penn

07-13-2009, 19:52

One would hope the seriousness of the situation would cause Senator Frankin to be on his best behavior.

Penn

07-13-2009, 20:10

Sigaba, I was responding to the civil right line of questioning. I think Judge Sotomayor is well prepared to address that approach to her position and issues. After all she is a "Latina"!!! She owns the 14th Amendment.

The questions should be centered on her position in regards to Civil Liberties, which are, as you know, The Bill of Rights. Justice Sotomayor should be asked what her position is with respect to the 2nd Amendment and its potential of "Incorporation" unto the State, as the other 9 Amendments of The Bill of Rights have been.

Amendment II

Right to keep and bear arms

This amendment has been incorporated against the states within the jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals the California case (Guy Montag Doe, et al., v. San Francisco Housing Authority, et al., District Court Northern Division docket 08-3112). That lawsuit challenges a local law and lease provisions barring guns by residents of public housing in the city.

The 2nd Amendment has been held to not be incorporated against the states within the jurisdiction of the Second Circuit with regard to its ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller and Seventh Circuit Courts of Appeals, NRA v. Chicago.

Since Heller, over 50 suits have been filed concerning state gun control laws under the Second Amendment and decided in federal court. Five federal lawsuits have been filed by the NRA requesting the Second Amendment being applied to state and local governments via the Fourteenth Amendments Due Process Clause. Four of these lawsuits were settled out of court with removing gun bans in various states, but without a ruling on whether the Second Amendment is applicable to state and local governments. The fifth case: NRA v.Chicago has been rejected by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. A similar challenge was rejected by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Maloney v. Rice; resulting in a split circuit. This has forced The Supreme Court to ask for a writ of certiorari (1) to hear both cases.

(1) Certiorari: a common law writ issued by a superior court to one of inferior jurisdiction demanding the record of a particular case
wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

The U.S. Supreme Court has never heard a case for incorporation of this provision against the states. However, three cases that predate the Supreme Court's modern incorporation criteria Miller v. Texas 153 U.S. 535 (1894); Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886); United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1875) have held that incorporation did not apply to the states. (6)

The court has ruled that the 2nd Amendment address’s a pre-existing individual right to possess and carry firearms, which is not in any way reliant on the Constitution for its being, and some indicate that incorporation is likely, or that incorporation can hardly be denied if the lower courts follow the SCOTUS incorporation as they are required to do, by law.

With regard to the Second Amendment and the doctrine of Incorporation, the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller stated:

“With respect to Cruikshank's continuing validity on incorporation, a question not presented by this case, we note that Cruikshank also said that the first amendment did not apply against the states and did not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases. Our later decisions in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252, 265 (1886) and Miller v. Texas, 153 U.S. 535, 538 (1894), reaffirmed that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government”. (3)

The Supreme Court has unfailingly held that Fifth Amendment due process means substantially the same as Fourteenth Amendment due process, and therefore the original meaning of the former is relevant to the incorporation doctrine of the latter. When the Bill of Rights was originally planned by Congress in 1789 to the states, various substantive and procedural rights were "classed according to their affinity to each other" instead of being submitted to the states "as a single act to be adopted or rejected in the gross," as James Madison put it. Roger Sherman explained in 1789 that each amendment "may be passed upon distinctly by the States.”

District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. (2008)
Gitlow v. New York (1925) in which the Court expressly held that States were bound to observe First Amendment free speech protections. Since that time, the Court has steadily incorporated most of the significant provisions of the Bill of Rights. (5)

Missouri vs. Holland (1920) the United States Supreme Court held that the federal government's ability to make treaties is supreme over any state concerns about such treaties having abrogated any states' rights arising under the Tenth Amendment. The case revolved around the constitutionality of implementing the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. It is also notable for Justice Holmes' reference to the idea of a living constitution. (5)

U.S. of A vs, Cruikshank (1875), the earliest to deal with the application of the Bill of Rights are “Incorporated” and apply to state governments following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. (5)

Presser v. Illinois (1886) was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that Second Amendment to the United States Constitution limited only the power of Congress and the national government to control firearms, not that of the state. (5)
United States v. Miller (1939), the first Supreme Court of the United States decision to directly address the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Miller is a controversial decision in the ongoing American gun politics debate, as both sides claim that it supports their position. (5)

Maloney v. Cuomo, The district court rejected the claim on the ground that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states. On appeal, the panel affirmed. Relying on the Supreme Court’s 1886 decision in Presser v. Illinois, it explained that it was “settled law that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose” on the individual’s right to bear arms. (6)

(1) Certiorari: a common law writ issued by a superior court to one of inferior jurisdiction demanding the record of a particular case. wordnetweb.princeton.edu/

(2) Incorporation is the legal doctrine by which the Bill of Rights, either in full or in part, is applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. The basis for incorporation is substantive due process regarding substantive rights enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution, and procedural due process regarding procedural rights enumerated elsewhere in the Constitution.

(3) District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. (2008)

(4) Due Process Clause the principle that the government must respect all of the legal rights that are owed to a person according to the law of the land.

(5) Wikipedia

(6) http:// www.scotusblog.com

(7) No. 08-1497 Vide 08-1521 Title: National Rifle Association of America, Inc., et al., Petitioners v. City of Chicago, Illinois, et al. Docketed: June 4, 2009 Lower Ct: United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Case Nos.: (08-4241, 08-4243, 08-4244) Decision Date: June 2, 2009

(8). Greg Stohr. Individual Gun Rights Protected, Top U.S. Court Says, Bloomberg News, 2008-06-26.

(9) http://www.nraila.org

Praetorian

07-13-2009, 20:12

Sotomayor backers urge reporters to probe New Haven firefighter

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/71660.html

"WASHINGTON — Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who's at the center of Sotomayor's most controversial ruling.

On the eve of Sotomayor's Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the "troubled and litigious work history" of firefighter Frank Ricci. ........"

And what does any of that have to do with the fact that Sotomayor was WRONG when she ruled against him?

It sounds like a case of "you had the audacity to bring a case which is embarrassing to our gal, so were going to go after you personally."

Disgusting.

Penn

07-13-2009, 20:41

Judicial Pragmatism

The term originally derives from the title of a 1937 book of that name by Prof. Howard McBain

Although "the living Constitution" is itself a characterization rather than a specific method of interpretation, the phrase is associated with various non-originalist theories of interpretation. The most common association is with judicial pragmatism, In the course of his judgment in Missouri vs. Holland a case that 252 U.S. 416 (1920), Holmes made this remark on the nature of the constitution.

"With regard to that we may add that when we are dealing with words that also are a constituent act, like the Constitution of the United States, we must realize that they have called into life a being the development of which could not have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters. It was enough for them to realize or to hope that they had created an organism; it has taken a century and has cost their successors much sweat and blood to prove that they created a nation. The case before us must be considered in the light of our whole experience and not merely in that of what was said a hundred years ago. The treaty in question does not contravene any prohibitory words to be found in the Constitution. The only question is whether [252 U.S. 416, 434] it is forbidden by some invisible radiation from the general terms of the Tenth Amendment. We must consider what this country has become in deciding what that amendment has reserved."(6)

According to the pragmatist view, the Constitution should be seen as evolving over time as a matter of social necessity. Looking solely to original meaning, when the original intent was largely to permit many practices universally condemned today, is under this view cause to reject pure originalism out of hand.

View has been expressed by the libertarian Judge Richard Posner.

A constitution that did not invalidate so offensive, oppressive, probably undemocratic, and sectarian law [as the Connecticut law banning contraceptives] would stand revealed as containing major gaps. Maybe that is the nature of our, or perhaps any, written Constitution; but yet, perhaps the courts are authorized to plug at least the most glaring gaps. Does anyone really believe, in his heart of hearts, that the Constitution should be interpreted so literally as to authorize every conceivable law that would not violate a specific constitutional clause? This would mean that a state could require everyone to marry, or to have intercourse at least once a month, or it could take away every couple's second child and place it in a foster home.... We find it reassuring to think that the courts stand between us and legislative tyranny even if a particular form of tyranny was not foreseen and expressly forbidden by framers of the Constitution."(6)

This pragmatist objection is central to the idea that the Constitution should be seen as a living document. Under this view, for example, constitutional requirements of "equal rights" should be read with regard to current standards of equality, and not those of decades or centuries ago, because the alternative would be unacceptable.(5)

(5) Wikipedia

(6) http:// www.scotusblog.com

Sigaba

07-13-2009, 20:51

Sigaba, I was responding to the civil right line of questioning.
Chef Penn--

Understood. By mentioning civil rights I was referring to what you defined as civil liberties. To me, using the term "civil rights" rather than "civil liberties" broadens the discussion to include other issues in addition to race and gender.

Defender968

07-14-2009, 05:43

I watched a good portion of the first day of the confirmation hearings yesterday, and after watching the demeanor of those on the panel and the statements by Mrs. Sotomayor it is my opinion that she will be seated regardless of the facts. She has already learned the Washington 2 step, doesn't matter what you did/said/believe in the past, you just tell people what they want to hear and you're good, the same way the One got elected.

It's too bad our political establishment lacks the intestinal fortitude to call a spade a spade and do what's best for the country, as clearly IMHO Mrs. Sotomayor is not what is best for the country, but then again not much that's been done in Washington for the past 40 years has been what's best for the Country IMHO.

Penn

07-14-2009, 08:41

In regard to your comments concerning Justice Sotomayor I think you will find her a centrist.
Here's little tidbit: 6 of the 9 members of the Court are Roman Catholic! ~

Counsel

07-14-2009, 09:35

The Constitution gives that right to residents of the States, not territories. I thought that the people of PR wanted to be a separate Commonwealth?

They didn't want to be Americans when the Navy and Marines were training on Vieques. As a matter of fact, I thought at that time that the Independentistas were going to take over and declare soverignty. Artillery units of the PR Guard had to go to CONUS to train on their guns.

Do you really want to pay Federal taxes on top of the Commonwealth taxes? My friends who had to do that were stunned at the tax burden.

I would say that you are behind DC in regards to the right to elect reps to the U.S. Congress.

TR

1)There is no explicit constitutional right to vote for the POTUS. The 24th amendment only provides the right of “citizens” of the US to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President and for electors for President or Vice President. And guess what, every Puertorican born here is an Amercan citizen, yet we don't have that right.

You thought that the people of PR wanted to be a separate Commonwealth? Well, last November the pro Statehood candidate got 1,014,325 votes (52.78%) while the pro Commonwealth candidate got 793,642 (41.29%). That means that 94.07% of voters want some type of permanent relationship with the US. Practically every PR Resident Commissioner in Congress has filed a bill to begin the decolonization process and of course, it gets nowhere. Congress is more interested in saving the whales than our status problem, that ironically enough, they created. Every time the same BS excuses.

2) You know that everywhere in the world the “loud” minorities are the ones that get all the attention and for obvious reasons. The Independentistas got 39,156 votes (2.04%) in November’s elections. They could even maintain their franchise. What about all those anti ROTC colleges and universities in the continental US? Are they anti-american too? I don’t recall the Navy back in 2003 going out of their way to explain what happened in Vieques or the importance of the live bombing range to national security, even thou D. Sanes death was not the first. Hell, if you want something bad enough and you know it’s right then you fight for it, tooth and nail. The Navy never did that. You will get a kick out of this; you know who was among the leaders of the anti Navy coalition in Vieques…Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
However, the government of PR fought the BRAC and won to maintain Ft. Buchanan open. Are we a little more American for that? You imply that since the Vieques range is close artillery units of the PR Guard had to go to CONUS to train on their guns. I don't know why they had to go, I am not privileged to that information, but Camp Santiago is still here. Since the Civil War Puertoricans have been fighting and dying to provide for our way of life and the liberties that we so much cherish. So don’t brush all of us as anti Americans.

3) Federal taxes on top of Commonwealth (state) taxes…yes, as every other American. Current federal employees have to deal with this and I don’t see them in the streets. We already pay federal taxes just not regarding income.

4) Yes, we trail every other territory incorporated or not incorporated in our struggle for equality.

Cordially,

JGA

Sigaba

07-14-2009, 09:51

IMO, Senator Hatch is being rude. Judge Sotomayor's face visibly flushed with some of his comments.

Hopefully, the remaining Republican senators can go at Ms. Sotomayor with the same level of intensity but with a higher level of civility.

YMMV.

The Reaper

07-14-2009, 10:14

We already pay federal taxes just not regarding income.

I wish I only had to pay Federal taxes, just not income taxes.

When we moved from Panama to PR, there were a lot of promises made that did not materialize.

The federal employees who came up and were stuck with Commonwealth and Federal taxes were unhappy, and many quit before the USARSO HQs moved back to CONUS after just 37 months. I think the kicker for many was when the PR tax office owed them refunds, but sent them letters saying that due to shortages of funds, they would be issued a rain check for their refunds. Then, they refused to let them change their witholdings to reduce their tax overwitholdings.

The obstacles to training on the island, particularly live fire training, were so bad that the SF Company was effectively prevented from training and maintaining their combat readiness. It took almost a year to get permission to fire .50s at Camp Santiago. The story we were given was that a PR Guard artillery unit had fired a round which landed off post in a civilian area, so all weapons firing was severely restricted for all units.

After the massive upgrades to Ft. Buchanan to accomodate USARSO, which relocated to CONUS shortly afterwards, what are the tenant commands assigned there? The PR Guard was still down in Old San Juan, last time I heard. I thought that the base was left open primarily for the DoD Schools, the Commissary and the Class 6 store. The BRAC made a number of bad decisions, but I understood that the process was free of political influence. How did PR manage to keep an installation in a very expensive area with no training or major tenant units open?

Sigaba - I heard some of Senator Hatch's questions, and thought that other than rushing through her answers and interrupting a few times, he was reasonably cordial. At least he mentioned the 2nd Amendment and asked her questions about her interpretation of it.

TR

Penn

07-15-2009, 17:31

Watching the confirmation hearings today Justice Sotomayor referenced the concept of "Incorporated" when questioned on gun control the 2nd amendment. Justice Stomayor's statement on the issue implies that this will be on the SCOTUS agenda within the next year. And that it will be "incorporated".

Richard

07-15-2009, 18:22

Since the Civil War Puertoricans have been fighting and dying to provide for our way of life and the liberties that we so much cherish. So don’t brush all of us as anti Americans.

Not all - but there is that vocal element - I had a PR NCO who committed suicide after failing the JM Course for the second time - pride - another PR NCO escorted the body back to PR for burial - he was treated like dirt and told me he'd never go back there as long as he lived - life is what it is - and complicated for us all. ;)

Richard's $.02 :munchin

Counsel

07-16-2009, 08:32

life is what it is - and complicated for us all.

True

dac

07-17-2009, 11:44

I am far from wise or experienced in the world of politics, but I do not agree with some of Sotomayor's ideals. [Whine removed.] This is the first time in my life that I am paying attention to politics and I am often confused by what politicians do and say.

The issue is all but decided at this point but reading this made me feel a little better. I spent the last four days wondering why someone didn't just stand up and call her a liar.

Ace of Spades HQ (http://ace.mu.nu/archives/289812.php)

I guess we're in a rebuilding year.

Penn

07-17-2009, 13:14

Dac, please refrain from whining publicly about being a poor white boy lost in the wilderness of unequal representation while the pendulum swings this way and that...it almost makes me want to puke too, just thinking about it. But, this is redemption; as you learned to Respect Justice O’ Conner, so you will Justice Sotomayor and her “Latina” consciousness with its direct connection to the land of liberty and moral correctness, as stated and outlined in the “Bill of Rights”, Halleluiah, Halleluiah. I can just see the vote now, but before you go dancing in the streets, tell me how happy you are have Puerto Rico as the next state….

incarcerated

07-22-2009, 21:38

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203946904574300612091553366.html?m od=googlenews_wsj

Vote No on Sotomayor

OPINION
JULY 22, 2009, 7:35 P.M. ET
By DAVID MCINTOSH

As Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing began last week, many commentators predicted that she would portray herself as a moderate judge committed to judicial restraint. True to these expectations, Judge Sotomayor described her judicial philosophy as quite simple: “fidelity to the law.” Yet the judge’s history on the Second Circuit—not to mention her earlier speeches—suggest that she believes judges can go beyond the law to make policy decisions. For this reason, a vote to confirm Judge Sotomayor is almost certainly a vote in favor of restricting Second Amendment protections and property rights, upholding racial preferences, and providing unlimited abortion on demand.

During last week’s hearing, several senators sought to determine whether Judge Sotomayor supports the Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms. In particular, they asked whether this right should be enforced against state governments. Sen. Russ Feingold (D., Wis.) praised the Supreme Court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), in which it held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to keep and bear arms. Mr. Feingold pressed Judge Sotomayor about her Second Circuit panel decision in Maloney v. Cuomo (2009), where she and her colleagues rejected the argument that the right to keep and bear arms should be enforced against the states, stating that “the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right.” That’s like saying you have the right to free speech in Washington, D.C., but not in Arkansas, Indiana or California.

In response to Mr. Feingold’s inquiry, Judge Sotomayor defended the Second Circuit’s decision in Maloney. She refused to acknowledge that her court could have enforced the right to bear arms against the states. Judge Sotomayor’s involvement in this decision does not bode well for a ruling in favor of Second Amendment rights if she is confirmed to the Court.

Judge Sotomayor also revealed a troubling approach to property rights in Didden v. Village of Port Chester (2006). Sitting on another Second Circuit panel, Judge Sotomayor voted to uphold the condemnation of the plaintiffs’ private property despite the obvious corruption surrounding the case. The plaintiffs’ only faced condemnation because they refused to pay off a politically connected developer. When they refused to pay, the city then condemned the land, declaring it for “public use.”

The court’s decision in Didden weakened protections for property owners even further than the Supreme Court’s decision in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) and indicates that Judge Sotomayor would likely exercise a similar approach on the Supreme Court.

Senators should also be concerned by Judge Sotomayor’s support of racial hiring preferences. In the now famous Ricci v. DeStefano (2009) firefighter case, a Second Circuit panel of judges, including Judge Sotomayor, upheld the city’s decision to disregard the results of a promotion examination because too few racial minorities passed. On June 29, the Supreme Court overturned the Second Circuit’s ruling, a vote of no-confidence in Judge Sotomayor’s reasoning in Ricci.

In addition, from 1980-92 Judge Sotomayor served on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, a prominent legal defense and education group organized in part to support unlimited abortion rights. During this period, the fund filed briefs in several prominent abortion cases that expressed unqualified support for a woman’s right to obtain an abortion and opposition to any limits on the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade (1973). Judge Sotomayor’s willingness to play an active role in the fund’s activities is telling.

When you look at Judge Sotomayor’s long, activist legal career, it is hard to square with her new, modest claim of “fidelity to the law.” She herself has said the Supreme Court sets policy. On that standard, Republican and moderate Democratic senators—particularly those in red and purple states—should vote against confirming Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

Mr. McIntosh, a former Republican congressman from Indiana, served as special assistant to President Reagan for domestic affairs and was a co-founder of the Federalist Society.

Penn

08-01-2009, 20:54

I was referring to what you defined as civil liberties. To me, using the term "civil rights" rather than "civil liberties" broadens the discussion to include other issues in addition to race and gender.

Sigaba, my apologies for the delay; I have an exhibition on the 15th and have been knee deep in linseed oil, egg yolk, and pigment; which of course all leads to my civil right to chose what subject matter is not appropriate for me to consider…e.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/09/nyregion/how-much-trouble-s-that-nude-in-window.html

According to West’s Law dictionary, “Civil rights are defined as those rights belonging to an individual by virtue of citizenship, especially the fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and by subsequent acts of Congress, including civil liberties, due process, equal protection of the laws, and freedom from discrimination”. Whereas, “Civil Liberties are defined as: Fundamental individual rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, protected by law against unwarranted governmental or other interference”. (1)

These two definitions are confusing as they seem interchangeable, save the citizenship requirement of civil rights and the related idea of civil society; which in my mind would be contractual. While civil liberties are not contractual, but divine, or unalienable. (Unalienable, interesting word for the late 1700’s) I have the unalienable right to paint what I chose, it is arguable whether I have the right too display whatever subject matter where and when I choose; or subject a very affected and annoying reporter to a smoke filled room, refusing to ventilate just to add to the prickliness of the situation.

That said might we consider the tonality of the threads progression to better understand what Justice Sotomayor’s judicial activism represents in relation to both Civil Liberties and Civil Rights. In all honesty, I truly believe that “We the People” would want the most Libertarian Justices’ available; and empower them to interpret the Constitution in relation to the founders intent. Now I do not want to be side tracked with: please define the founders constitutional intent, but rather, explore the history of judicial activism in relation to the civil rights issues of the 50’s & 60’s which required judicial activism to resolve social injustices that could only be addressed via a pragmatic contemporary reading of original intent.

(1) West Law Dictionary

Sigaba

08-15-2009, 14:59

Sigaba, my apologies for the delay; I have an exhibition on the 15th and have been knee deep in linseed oil, egg yolk, and pigment; which of course all leads to my civil right to chose what subject matter is not appropriate for me to consider…e.g.: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/09/nyregion/how-much-trouble-s-that-nude-in-window.html

According to West’s Law dictionary, “Civil rights are defined as those rights belonging to an individual by virtue of citizenship, especially the fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and by subsequent acts of Congress, including civil liberties, due process, equal protection of the laws, and freedom from discrimination”. Whereas, “Civil Liberties are defined as: Fundamental individual rights, such as freedom of speech and religion, protected by law against unwarranted governmental or other interference”. (1)

These two definitions are confusing as they seem interchangeable, save the citizenship requirement of civil rights and the related idea of civil society; which in my mind would be contractual. While civil liberties are not contractual, but divine, or unalienable. (Unalienable, interesting word for the late 1700’s) I have the unalienable right to paint what I chose, it is arguable whether I have the right too display whatever subject matter where and when I choose; or subject a very affected and annoying reporter to a smoke filled room, refusing to ventilate just to add to the prickliness of the situation.

That said might we consider the tonality of the threads progression to better understand what Justice Sotomayor’s judicial activism represents in relation to both Civil Liberties and Civil Rights. In all honesty, I truly believe that “We the People” would want the most Libertarian Justices’ available; and empower them to interpret the Constitution in relation to the founders intent. Now I do not want to be side tracked with: please define the founders constitutional intent, but rather, explore the history of judicial activism in relation to the civil rights issues of the 50’s & 60’s which required judicial activism to resolve social injustices that could only be addressed via a pragmatic contemporary reading of original intent.

(1) West Law Dictionary
Chef Penn--

My friend, apologies are not necessary.:D Unless capers are involved.:(

FWIW, Black's Law Dictionary, Standard Ninth Edition (2009)* offers the following definitions of civil liberty (p. 280) and civil right (p. 281).

Civil liberty
Freedom from undue governmental interference or restraint. • This term usu[ally] refers to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and other liberties associated with the Bill of Rights....
Civil right
The individual rights of personal liberty guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and by the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments, as well as by legislation such as the Voting Rights Act. • Civil rights include esp[ecially] the right to vote, the right of due process, and the right of equal protection under the law.
It seems that the Black's Law Dictionary of civil right is closer to the West's Law Dictionary of civil liberty.

In my mind, questions to consider in addition to the ones you posed include:

How do the distinctions between civil liberties and civil rights impact a broader discussion of either?
Would the discourse over issues including the Second Amendment improve if the distinctions were removed? (I am imagining a coalition of citizens, activists, and lawmakers that takes a very broad view of civil liberties rather than the piecemeal approach we see so much of today.)
Whom do the distinctions benefit and whom do they hurt? (Are differing perceptions of affirmative action so divisive that they cannot be reconciled? Can the discussion of civil rights and civil liberties be re-imagined, reconfigured, and rebooted?)

____________________________________________
* ISBN 13: 9780314199492