By Thomas Kochman - 06.12.2009
It didn’t take long for parallels to be drawn between Sonia Sotomayor , Clarence Thomas,Thurgood Marshall, and even Sandra Day O’Conner, the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court. Some say she’s nothing like Thomas or Marshall, while others hope that like Marshall, Sotomayor will draw upon her life experience to bring empathy once again to Supreme Court deliberations.
Sotomayor has advanced the notion that her life experience as a Latina could give her an advantage in judgment. Those familiar with her work however suggest that her decisions as a federal judge have been generally narrow and have not shown any pattern favoring women or ethnic minorities. Backers including Harvard University\’s Martha Minow say she hews to the facts and law of a case. Read more »
By Thomas Kochman - 06.10.2009
Many conservatives expressed strong concern at the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, fearing her rulings will favor women or members of ethnic minority groups. This concern is based on comments she made suggesting having lived as woman and Latina may give her an advantage in judgment in certain instances over a white male, for example, who has not lived that kind of life.
Some have even questioned whether that constitutes a personal bias and will affect her ability to effectively interpret the law or the Constitution. Wendy Long, a lawyer with the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network and a former law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, has criticized Sotomayor as a judge who believes \”one\’s sex, race and ethnicity ought to affect the decisions one renders.\”
Her supporters dismiss this concern citing among other things her dissenting opinion in the case Pappas vs. Giulani in which she saw Pappas’ “anonymous dissemination of bigoted racist anti-black and anti-semitic materials” within the New York Police Department while “patently offensive, hateful, and insulting,” as nonetheless protected free speech under the First Amendment. Read more »
By Jean Mavrelis - 06.05.2009
Would a Latina be likely to have a more well-rounded, multicultural perspective than a white man who has lived and worked his entire life in only mainstream environments?
Sotomayor said, “I would hope 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.”
“Better” was an unfortunate word choice, but if she means that individuals who have lived a minority experience, and then come into the mainstream, are more likely to have a multicultural perspective than members of the dominant white male group, then I would agree. People who have experienced what it’s like to be on both sides of the dominant white power structure in the U.S. do indeed have a value-added, more well rounded frame of reference. Some white folks also acquire multicultural perspectives, and that’s value added, too. (Bill Clinton has been called the first Black president by African Americans-but even there he can’t truly experience a Black perspective). Read more »
