More Sotomayor controversy
In a recent news release, the Committee for Justice writes:
“Yesterday’s release of Judge Sotomayor’s Senate questionnaire conclusively puts the lie to President Obama’s assertion that he is ‘sure she would have restated’ her now famous 2001 remark in Berkeley, CA that ‘a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male.’ Ditto for Robert Gibbs’s earlier assertion that ‘if she had the speech to do all over again, I think she’d change that word.’ The Associated Press summarized the evidence to the contrary found in the released documents:
‘Obama has said he is “sure she would have restated it.” In fact, she said it almost precisely the same way in speeches to the Princeton Club in 2002 and one at Seton Hall law school in 2003, according to copies she sent the Senate.’
“‘Not only did Sotomayor repeat her controversial claim about racial and gender superiority in 2002 and 2003, but the documents released yesterday reveal she also made similar claims – substituting ‘wise woman’ for ‘wise Latina woman’ – in a 1999 speech to the Women’s Bar Association of New York State and in a 1994 speech to the Conference on Law Reviews.’”
I recently pointed out that Judge Sotomayor’s “The Court of Appeals is where policy is made” remark is standard orthodoxy among the legal elite. Her “wise Latina” statements are orthodoxy as well: Gender and ethnic politics are endemic among the nation’s law professors, for example. In fact, the American Bar Association ensures that a law school that doesn’t buy into the “diversity” agenda doesn’t get accredited. Anyone from that ideological school could have said what Sotomayor said – as President Obama, a former law school instructor, well knows.
The important thing here is not so much that Judge Sotomayor holds such views, but that they are endemic among so many of the nation’s most influential lawyers, judges, and legal educators. Most Americans know that those views are unfair and wrong. But most Americans are informed by common sense and Judeo-Christian morality rather than by “deconstructionism,” “critical race theory,” “legal realism,” radical feminism, and the rest of the trendy theories with which legal academia is inundated.
In case you’re curious, the AP article that the first quote (“Obama has said…”) comes from can be found here: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090605/D98K6SVG0.html
I was unable to locate the source of the second quote (“Not only did Sotomayor repeat her…”). I only tried looking with Google, Bing, Altavista, Lycos, and AOL. Another search engine could possibly find it.
The second AP quote can be found here: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090605/D98K6SVG0.html
You can’t find a link in support of your relevant contention?
“The International Onion News service today found that Maria/Sonia SotoMAYor is a practitioner of Santaria, and will lop off chicken heads to found her court decisions. Surprisingly, people have a problem with this.”
Who the bloody hell is this “Committee for Justice”? Is that like the Justice League of America? Is Wonder Woman their Secretary, or their group squeeze?
Evidence, Rob. One might think a lawyer would value such things …
The third quote can be found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/04/AR2009060403265.html?hpid=moreheadlines
Wulfgar, when did the Washington Post change it’s name to the International Onion News that you reference?
Craig: “The second AP quote can be found here”
Is that the “not only did Sotomayor repeat” quote? I wasn’t able to locate that quote in that particular article.
That is the third quote and can be found in the WP article that I linked.
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In a 1999 speech to the Women’s Bar Association of New York State, Sotomayor invoked “sister power,” called for the selection of a third woman Supreme Court justice — which she would now be — and used phrasing similar to that in the Berkeley speech. “I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion,” she said.
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Craig Moore = satire challenged.
CNN has the story on her 1994 speech: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/03/sotomayor.supporters.speech/
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The March 17, 1994, speech to the Conference on Law Reviews was submitted to the Senate in 1997 when Sotomayor was nominated — and ultimately confirmed with Republican support — to be on the U.S. Court of Appeals. In it, she discussed the role of gender and referenced a quote attributed to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor that “a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion.”
“I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experience would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion,” she said in the 1994 speech.
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I don’t know about satire, but I have a bum wheel according to the ortho surgeon.
And I would hope the same. I mean it’s not like 51% of the population is them women or any such thing …
I don’t think even my surgeon could remove Obama’s foot from his mouth over his assertion.
Craig Moore: “That is the third quote and can be found in the WP article that I linked.”
I’m not talking about the quote from Sotomayor, I’m just talking about the paragraph in general. Professor Natelson’s entire forth paragraph is enclosed in quotes, so I’ve been looking for the origins of that paragraph, but so far I’ve been unsuccessful. It’s not in the WP article you linked.
Mihalis, did you try looking at the news release from the Committee for Justice that Rob references????????
Look here: http://www.committeeforjustice.org/blog/2009/06/sotomayor-questionnaire-raises-new.html
You actually think that matters? Suck it up, big boy. Right now, Sotomayor’s confirmation polls 70% favorable. You can attack Obama over this all you wish, but you’re going to lose. Accept and move on.
Kinda hard considering that Rob was to scared to actually link that bad boy …
“to” s/b “too”.
Obama can lie about most anything and it won’t matter these days. He has apologists and sycophants like you doing his heavy lifting and spinning. How do you think Hillary feels these days being a mere sock puppet?
Craig Moore: “Mihalis, did you try looking at the news release from the Committee for Justice that Rob references????????”
No, I didn’t realize that the entire first four paragraphs all originated there, and my searches on Google (and other search engines) didn’t locate the news release. Thank you for the link.
“Kinda hard…” Is that more of your satire? Just do a search on Committee for Justice. Go to their site and click on the news release.
Been there and done that, asswipe. Why, seriously, why are you requiring me to provide proof for Rob’s bullshit?
Empathy is your mutant power, asshole. I don’t care how Hillary feels. You don’t either, just admit it.
First you say “kinda hard” and now you say “asswipe.” I would advise you not to use a handful of switchgrass.
Can’t answer a single question, can you, Craig?
Wolf’s right about the latino being a shoein. Especially when all the good questions are left out.
Sotomayor Questionnaire Omits Death Penalty-Racism Memo [Wendy Long]
This morning, I sent a letter to U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee members, noting that Judge Sotomayor’s responses and documentary production in her Supreme Court nomination questionnaire are incomplete.
The omission noted concerns a memo that Sotomayor signed as a member of a three-person task force of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense & Education Fund, in which she objects to the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York state, on the basis, among other things, of her contention that “Capital punishment is associated with evident racism in our society.” The entire memo is worth reading.
One of two possibilities explains this omission: Either this is another Tom Daschle-type vetting failure, or the White House wants to rush this nomination through to avoid such documents coming to light.
The Senate questionnaire has not been completed in “record time,” as the White House asserted yesterday with great fanfare.
It has not even been completed.
It can be completed in one of two ways: Judge Sotomayor and the White House can fill out the form properly and completely, and provide all pertinent documents, or those of us on the outside can continue to do our piecemeal research and the questionnaire can be repeatedly sent back every time it is shown to be withholding information.
Cut and paste for the link challenged.
The link to a story on the document Big Swede cited is http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49218. It looks like CBS, of all places, helped break the story. The memo itself is at http://judicialnetwork.com/contents/files/Death-Penalty-Report.pdf
This is a rather old memo — 1981, and would have no influence if there were no other evidence of a fixation on the issues of race, gender, and ethnicity.
On the other hand, there is also a point that Justice Scalia once made: It is unreasonable to expect any one qualified to be nominated for a position like the Supreme Court not to have formed opinions about the great issues of the day. Under the traditional view of judging, once inaugurated, a judge slips into a particular role and discards preconceived notions while doing his job, to the extent humanly possible. But the difficulty here is that to the extent that Judge Sotomayor shares more “modern” notions of “legal realism” and freewheeling constitutional interpretation, she would be encouraged and empowered to import her preconceived notions about race, gender, and ethnicity into her work on the Supreme Court. There is some evidence she has NOT yielded to that temptation on the Court of Appeals. But the Court of Appeals is subject to a higher tribunal, and the Supreme Court is not. So it is appropriate to seek as Supreme Court justices those candidates with a particularly high level of judicial discipline.
Rob, I dealt with this at some length on my own blog, but I am troubled here by the implication that you endorse the claim that Sotomayor believes in “racial and gender superiority.” The controversial quote, in all of its manifestations, seems to clearly refer to the value of a range of experiences, not to the value of belonging to any particular gender or race. I don’t see how you can read it any other way or where you detect a “fixation” on race, gender and ethnicity.
David Crisp, you are more than simply troubled if you truly believe that Sotomayor is referring to the value of a range of experiences, not to the value of belonging to any particular gender or race.
Would you be equally as comfortable if it was a Caucasian gentlemen, rather than a Latina lady, who had made an equally as racist comment, and said, ‘a wise Caucasian man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a Latina woman.’?
Walter, I reply to that exact point in detail at billingsnews.blogspot.com
David, I tend to disagree. Whenever anyone uses their class, race, gender, ethnicity, or other group identifier as a shield or a sword, they don’t deserve a wink pass on their intentions. When it is a matter of a Supreme justice selection, it simply is not necessary to shoehorn a candidate into the slot when there are many other qualified candidates where such doubts are not present.
Sotomayor repeated her infamous comment several times over the years. That cannot be ignored as a mere mistake. In my opinion the benefit of the doubt goes to protecting the fairness of the judicial system.
Craig, Not sure what you are disagreeing with. If she were using her class, race, gender or ethnicity as a shield or sword, then I probably would agree with you. But she isn’t. She’s just saying that experiences matter. When Alito said the same thing, nobody cared. But when a Latina says it, people start jumping to the conclusion that she practices identity politics. That probably tells you something about who is really playing the race and gender cards.
David she did NOT say her experience and ethnicity mattered. She repeatedly made the comparison to infer her experience and ethnicity made her gender and racial background superior. I have NO problem with someone merely saying they are who they are given their life experiences. It does raise a red flag when there is a comparison and inference of superiority on multiple occasions over the years. That’s the difference.
Craig, You have to look at the plain language of what she said. She did not say she belongs to a superior race. She did not say she belongs to a superior gender. She’s just saying that women like her, who have had to overcome a legacy of discrimination based on race and gender, might possibly be able to (“I would hope”), in at least 51 percent of the cases (“more often than not”) have a clearer perspective on the law than people who haven’t been through all of that. I would bet money that she would agree that if the situation were reversed, and white males were now overcoming a couple of centuries of discrimination to become serious Supreme Court candidates for the first time, she would agree that they would have an advantage in making certain tough calls. Not because of gender. Not because of race. But because of what they would have gone through.
And I think that the fact that so many allegedly conservative white males have trouble understanding what she is saying indicates that she is right.
David, again if there is to be the benefit of the doubt, err on the side of fairness for the legal system. There are just tooooo many other qualified candidates for which such a concern is not an issue.
Craig, Did you oppose Alito for the same reason?
I agree with Craig’s analysis. If we are to infer that her focus was on her life’s experience and not on her ethinicity, would it be appropriate to juxtapose it against ‘the white male’? If one truly believes that she was focusing on her experience then her contrasting choice appears to be a sterotype of sorts which again, isn’t the mark of a fair judge. A contrast to some non-descript person would have lent some weight to the argument that she simply meant that her experiences in life makes her the person she is.
David, do you have an Alito quote, like the numerous Sotomayor statements, where he compares his background and gender to others to reach a “better conclusion,” as she claims? I am not aware of any.
In his confirmation hearing, Alito said, “When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.”
I guess he didn’t actually say that taking ethnic background and gender into account made his decisions better. He may have meant that it made his decisions worse. But you and I know what he meant.
David, as I said before, “I have NO problem with someone merely saying they are who they are given their life experiences. It does raise a red flag when there is a comparison and inference of superiority on multiple occasions over the years. That’s the difference.”
Craig, So it’s OK to say that your experiences influence your judging, so long as you don’t say that they influence your judging in a good way? That sounds like awfully narrow ground on which to stake out a claim.
David, I disagree. Nuff said. Good chat.
I think this controversy is interesting . it is really useful
And I agree with your think that ” that’s the difference ”
Thank you !!!!
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tuyen dung | tim viec | viec lam