Sonia Sotomayer

Sonia Sotomayer has been nominated to fill the position on the US Supreme Court left by the pending retirement of David Souter.

A graduate of Princeton and Yale Law School, Judge Sotomayer has been on the Federal Bench since 1992.

This one looks like a slam dunk. Her presence on the Court does not significantly alter the liberal-conservative dynamic, as Justice Souter usually voted with the liberal bloc. To vote against Sotomayer would be to vote against a woman and a Hispanic. Besides, even if all of the Republicans in the Senate voted against her, they don’t have the votes to stop her nomination. The Repubs know it, the Dems know it, so there will be plenty o’ grandstanding, which will change the end result not one iota.

Since this was a done deal, I wasn’t going to exert a lot of energy on it. Then I read that Judge Sotomayer said this: “I would hope 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 who hasn’t lived that life.”

Now, when I first read that, I thought “No way. That has got to be an Internet hoax in the making.”

Well, it turns out that she really did say that, as part of a speech she gave in 2001. Apparently the snippet is taken out of context. The full text of the speech can be found here.

Even if you accept her point that being a woman Hispanic makes her a better judge in areas of sexual and racial discrimination, and I’m not sure I do (after all, there’s a reason why the statue of justice is wearing a blindfold), it raises a question for me.

If being a woman and a Hispanic makes you a better judge in some types of cases, where does it make you a worse judge?

Now that’s a question I like to see asked.