Sotomayor deserves our support
Judge Sonia Sotomayor deserves our support for the U.S. Supreme Court. She’s earned it not because of who she is but because of how she thinks and what she has accomplished.
If confirmed, she would become the first member of the nation’s growing and underrepresented Latino population to serve on the court. She would also be the third woman ever appointed. While much has been made of her identity and compelling personal story, it is her academic, legal and real-world credentials that make her a great pick.
Sotomayor graduated from Princeton summa cum laude. You can’t get higher than that. At Yale Law School, she was an editor of the law review, another prestigious spot.
When she became a lawyer, she “worked at almost every level of our judicial system,” as President Obama noted. And he was correct to add that she has “more experience on the bench and more varied experience of the bench than anyone currently serving on the Supreme Court when they were appointed.”
In addition, her experience with financial and securities law would also add some much-needed expertise.
Though the right would like to paint her as a liberal ideologue, her extensive record overwhelmingly shows otherwise.
The most controversial of Judge Sotomayor’s remarks — that her own experiences as a Puerto Rican and a woman inform her decisions — have been wildly distorted. All judges are informed by life experience. That is as true of Justice Antonin Scalia as it is for Sotomayor.
The mainstream character of Sotomayor’s rulings have led to bipartisan support in the past. President George H.W. Bush nominated her for district judge in 1992, and President Clinton appointed her to the appeals court in 1998.
The U.S. Senate has a duty to examine Sotomayor’s qualifications rigorously. It also owes her a respectful nomination hearing.
But many on the right refuse to give her any respect. Rush Limbaugh called her a “hack” and a “reverse racist.” Newt Gingrich called her a “racist.” One commenter at the New York Daily News’ Web site said the only thing new she’d bring to the Supreme Court is “rice and beans.”
It’s unfortunate that such a highly qualified nominee has to face such slurs.
But we should not be misled by them.
Sonia Sotomayor has the experience and the temperament to merit Obama’s and the nation’s confidence.
She will make for an outstanding Supreme Court justice.
Bernardo Ruiz is a freelance writer and documentary producer living in New York City. He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.
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Comments
JonBurack. You stated,
"I do not know of conservatives who call her a racist for her Ricci decision."
I guess you don't know of Pat Buchanan, Rush Limpballs, and Glenn Beck. All three have called her racist or bigoted for her ruling in the Ricci case.
Yes, Rush and Beck have ALSO called her a racist for her 2001 statements, both of them misquoting, taking out of context, and twisting her words just as you just did when you said, "They call her that for her remarks about how much "better" her decisions would be than those of any old white male because of her Hispanic background."
First, her comment has to be put into the context both of her other words in that speech, AND the fact the entire speech, and her comment, were talking ONLY about cases of racial and sexual discrimination.
Her actual words are "I would HOPE a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences [as a minority female] would MORE OFTEN THAN NOT reach a better conclusion [on racial and sexual discrimination cases] than a white male who has not lived that life [meaning he's never been the target of racial and sexual discrimination]."
She went on to qualify her remark in later passages by clarifying that she believes a white male just as capable as a minority female of reaching correct conlusions in such cases, but that a white male who has never faced racial or sexual discrimination would really have to work hard at studying the evidence to be able to come to a correct conclusion and that some don't care to put in the effort.
You went on to say, "I see no other way to characterize those remarks but as racist"
This is because you are an ignorant, Right-Wing, Racist tool yourself who gets his BS information from his Right-Wing masters like Rush Limpballs. Perhaps if you spent less time listening to dolts like him, you might actually have time to go and read the entire speech and realize that your characterization of her is beyond stupid and ignorant, it's inflammatory and racist.
You also said, "On Ricci, I would call her an advocate of group identity/victimology compensatory social engineering, and hence someone ready to discriminate against even disadvantaged white people in order to advance the groups she approves of as victims."
This is so much gobblygook I don't even know where to begin. However, I'll simply leave it at this. Her decision was NOT made in a vacuum. She was NOT the only one who rendered that judgment. Two other justices, who are white, agreed with her, and with the white justice from the lower court. They agreed with her because they agreed with the LAW.
The city of New Haven wasn't discriminating against the white firemen or the ONE Hispanic who passed. They simply threw out the test and didn't promote anyone so they could look at the test and see if they needed to start over in order to comply with Title VII. You can ignore that all you want. In fact, you'll probably have 5 traitors on the Supreme Court backing you up. It still won't make Sotomayor an advocate of identity politics rulings, or a bigot, or a reverse racist, or anything else. She was a judge doing her job and following precedent and the law, just as her white colleagues were.
I guess those other white judges hate whites too, right? And I guess Sotomayor hates Hispanics and only loves blacks, right? Because one of those who passed was an Hispanic. Your drivel, just like Rush Limpballs, is so despicable and idiotic as to beg the question of whether you ever graduated grade school.