Supreme Qualifications
I’m not going to do a huge post here, because not a lot needs to be said. But I just want to make something clear. If you are currently arguing against Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment to the Supreme Court because she’s unqualified, too abrasive, a reverse racist or an affirmative action pick, you’re full of shit. Just stop. You don’t believe any of that crap – or you didn’t before someone whispered those talking points into your ear. And an actual reading of her record (including the context for the one or two lines that the right pretends to be so upset about) dispels those myths. You’re opposing her because Barack Obama nominated her, and you oppose Barack Obama’s party and ideology.
And listen – it’s partisan politics. I understand that. But what you have to understand is that a Democratic President with a Democratic Congress is nominating a Supreme Court Justice. Who the hell did you think he was going to pick? What you have to ask yourself as a conservative is whether Sotomayor is about as personally acceptable a candidate as Obama is going to nominate.
That’s how I looked at Bush’s nominations – and my response reflected that outlook. I gawked at Harrier Miers, because she was legitimately unqualified. I shuddered at Sam Alito, because he apparently spends his evenings masturbating to the soothing sound of Antonin Scalia’s voice. And I agreed that John Roberts should be confirmed without serious opposition because while I don’t agree with him all that often, he’s about as reasonable a nominee as I was likely to see from Bush. And as the opposing minority, that’s really the only calculation worth performing.
Side Note: Neither this post nor its comments will be turned into a pissing ground over Sotomayor’s qualifications, or the empty talking points associated with them. So don’t even start.
It’s amazing how many liberals are incensed that anyone could possibly play politics with a nomination. Especially after the kinds of kangaroo court antics democrats have used in the past to oppose conservative nominees.
First let me say I agree with you 100%.
2ndly, let me say, I’ve read nothing to suggest she’s racist. The remark she made, while poorly worded, doesn’t suggest racism. She wasn’t comparing white men to latino women, she was comparing white male supreme court justices (which have flooded the supreme court since it’s inception) to latino female supreme court justices, of which there have been none.
This is very obviously another republican tactic to attempt to further suppress the minorities. (Like the ‘war on (some) drugs.’ ( read tinyurl.com/1mn if you’d like to see how that history played out, but in a nutshell: north wins civil war, outlaws slavery; corrupt politicians pen ‘grandfather clauses,’; grandfather clauses struck down as unconstitutional; corrupt uncle sam outlaws naturally growing drugs used, or portrayed as being used by minorities so he can replace slave labor with prison labor.)
You know, that “Wise Latina” thing gets thrown around a lot – and the folks quoting it always leave out the very important context. She was talking about understanding someone who was the victim of discrimination. In that case, yes, a woman who is also a minority just might have a slightly better idea of what that feels like than a white male – even if they are both excellent judges.
Does that mean that a white, male judge couldn’t render a fair verdict? No. It just means he’d inherently be making more assumptions about the case than someone who has experienced, first hand, that sort of discrimination. The statement has nothing to do with believing that one race or gender makes for a better judge, and anyone who uses it as justification of Sotomayor’s racism either lacks basic reading skills or is being intentionally dense in order to score political points. I have time for neither such person.
While I agree, I do not believe she is a racist. I do believe she is a little arrogant on the matter. A judge inherently is supposed to give a fair and rational judement with no personal bias for, or against a defendent. When it comes to judges, and especially supreme court judges, do you really want personal life experiences instead of calm, cool, rational interpretation of the law guiding their ruling? Of course not, an ideal judge needs to be as logical with thier verdicts as possible as to not have thier judement clouded by personal bias. Saying “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” leaves her open to unending criticism on any rulings she will ever make in the possability that she made her ruling on “the richness of her experiences” instead of the law and how it is written. While I have no objection to her being admitted to the supreme court, I can see why people might have reason to worry.
Evan, I can see where you are coming from on that, I really can. But one of the weird little glitches of the judicial system, especially when a case reaches the Supreme Court, is that the case inherently lies between the clear lines of the law. It would never (or rarely) reach the Supreme Court otherwise. While it’s true that justices should not be making laws, they should be interpreting them. And yes, those interpretations often do set policy. Sometimes that’s a good thing, and sometimes not so much.
But if it reaches the Supreme Court, there simply isn’t a single-reading way to view a case. So that “strict interpretation” rhetoric is really just rhetoric. Most cases that reach the SCOTUS are cases that pit one right against another. Now, it’d be nice if we had some kind of Bill Of Rights Flow Chart. But the world just doesn’t work that way. Hell, that’s why we HAVE a judicial branch. If every case that made it to trial were just a matter of applying the law, we could basically automate the process – which I imagine might run Dick Wolf out of business.
And that’s something that, again, I’ve considered for nominees from both sides of the political spectrum. It’s one of the reasons that I was okay with Roberts but not Alito (though being from New Jersey, I was a bit more Alito-conscious than many other folks). The truth is that we have this idea that there is no political litmus test for justices, and that’s always been bullshit. Of course there is. There are dozens of them. We just don’t ever talk about them in public.
People are worried, I think, because they are getting a very limited-spectrum view of her. They hear that “wise Latina” thing daily, but they don’t hear nearly as much about the case where she sided in favor of a white supremacist’s First Amendment rights. And just like I can mention that case, which strongly implies a lack of racial bias, I’m sure the other side could find cases that DO imply a racial bias. But here’s the thing. With all of the decisions she’s handed down, if the best case against her is a few quotes that kind of sound sort of racist out of context? That’s not really a case against her.
It’s moot at this point, though. It’s a losing battle for the GOP, and that was clear the day that Limbaugh started saying he was okay with her, because she was a Catholic and therefore might be conservative on social issues. I actually found that kind of talk dangerous, because when you get that much weight spinning at that high velocity, you run the serious risk of throwing the Earth out of its natural orbit.