Friday, May 22, 2009

Sonia Sotomayor’s Selective Empathy   [Ed Whelan]

National Journal’s Stuart Taylor has a great column on Second Circuit judge, and Supreme Court candidate, Sonia Sotomayor’s speech turned law-review article in which she expresses her “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” when each is acting as a judge “in deciding cases.”  (Sotomayor, “A Latina Judge’s Voice,” 13 Berkeley La Raza L.J. 87 (2002).)  As Taylor puts it:

 

So accustomed have we become to identity politics that it barely causes a ripple when a highly touted Supreme Court candidate, who sits on the federal Appeals Court in New York, has seriously suggested that Latina women like her make better judges than white males.

 

Any prominent white male would be instantly and properly banished from polite society as a racist and a sexist for making an analogous claim of ethnic and gender superiority or inferiority.

 

In modest defense of Sotomayor, I’ll note that her comments, which Taylor presents in full context, do not cohere well.  Consider, for example, the seeming contradiction between the italicized passages in consecutive sentences:

 

Judge [Miriam] Cedarbaum [of the federal District Court in New York] ... 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.

 

I don’t see how can Sotomayor both “agree with … Judge Cedarbaum’s aspiration” and “wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.”  But perhaps Sotomayor would accuse me of committing Anglo male logic.

05/22 10:47 AMShare