LRC: Columnists discuss President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court
June 2, 2009
Conservative
By John Fay
In editorials and excerpts of senatorial speeches, I’ve read that Republicans have a special obligation to tread lightly with the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court due to her ethnicity and gender. I, for one, don’t see why this issue is even raised.
Conservative senators have always treated judicial nominees with a great deal of deference and respect, even when those nominees very clearly disagreed with them on a variety of issues. For example, despite their failures to be forthright in confirmation hearings, both of Bill Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, were overwhelmingly confirmed by the Senate with bipartisan support.
Frankly, the Republicans have less to prove in this scenario than the Democrats do. It is the Democrats who have a long sordid history of infantile lies and cruel-minded vitriol when it comes to assessing the judicial selections of their opponents. I fully expect that the Republicans will handle this nomination in the same way they handle all nominations, by firmly but fairly demanding a clear explanation of Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy.
From what we know of Sotomayor’s philosophy so far, the record appears to be mixed. On the one hand, her ruling in 2002 supporting the Mexico City rule forbidding foreign funding for abortions affirmed that the government has the right to deny funding to groups involved in such behavior. This doesn’t mean she is anti-abortion — in fact, it is highly unlikely she is — but it shows she is fair-minded enough to give the other side a chance to express its feelings and receive its constitutional rights.
However, in other cases, her rulings are almost bizarrely nonsensical. In Ricci v. DeStefano, she ruled against a group of Connecticut firefighters on the basis that the entrance exams they took failed to pass any black candidates, and several qualified white candidates and one Hispanic candidate were denied promotions as a result. The idea that a man would be disqualified from a job he worked hard for and earned with the sweat of his brow simply because no candidate of a particular race was equally proficient in the job is ludicrous and almost cold-hearted.
Clearly, Sotomayor has some explaining to do. For the Republicans in the Senate, the job is relatively simple. Ask her the hard questions, demand straight answers and ultimately vote as one’s conscience leads. This selection will be tested in the coming weeks, and it is in her quality as a justice, not her identity as a Hispanic or as a woman, that she must justify her appointment.
Yes, Obama nominated the first Hispanic woman to the court, but that’s not what matters. If she is unqualified or unprepared to answer for her judicial philosophy, then the blame rests squarely on Obama’s shoulders. In the end, she will be tested, and she may indeed pass the test. But make no mistake: It is she and Obama whose judgment and responsibility are being assessed, not that of their conservative opponents. This is their chance to prove themselves, and Republicans look forward to giving them the opportunity.
Reach columnist John Fay at opinion@dailyuw.com.
Liberal
By Greg Ryan
It’s not hyperbole to say that appointing a judge to the Supreme Court will be among the most important and influential actions of Barack Obama’s presidency. No surprise then, that it has stirred up the very worst in the Republican Party.
They’ve claimed that she’s an affirmative-action choice because she was selected for her gender and heritage. While they’ve made themselves look like incredible bigots in the process of arguing this, they’re actually right. Obama did pick her because she’s a Hispanic woman, and it was a great move.
The debate has turned nasty very quickly. Karl Rove has already called nominee Sonia Sotomayor stupid. Actually, he merely suggested that he knows a lot of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools. Say, I wonder whom he was thinking of?
But this isn’t the worst of it. Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Tom Tancredo have all loudly denounced her as a racist for suggesting that her experiences as a Hispanic woman would positively influence her decision-making ability.
Of course a justice’s life experience is going to shape her decisions on the bench; this is a good thing. Even conservative Justice Sam Alito testified that his ethnic heritage and the history of discrimination against members of his family would give him helpful perspective.
Any way you look at it, race is a factor in this nomination. I don’t mean it’s the only qualification or the most important. There are tons of people qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. Obama clearly picked a Hispanic woman from among this group because it’s good for the court, good for the country and yes, its good for him politically. The subject of affirmative action is a whole other discussion that has played out many times before. Lets just say, in this case, I think it’s the way to go.
It can’t be denied that Hispanics are an attractive voting base for national elections, especially in the West, where Democrats have successfully been gaining ground over the past two cycles. By putting the first Hispanic woman on the Supreme Court, Obama will do a lot to cement the Democratic hold on the Hispanic vote.
That’s what makes the character of Republican opposition so hilarious. By trashing her as a racist, suggesting she is unqualified and saying she beat out a good white guy, the Republicans are completely alienating the only Hispanic people they have left in their party.
This is just the latest round in the ongoing struggle on the part of the far right to purge their party, the only vehicle for future power of anything that would get them elected again. They just don’t want anyone non-white, non-Christian or anyone who pays their taxes with pride instead of bitterness.
Sotomayor is sure to be confirmed by a decent margin in the Senate. This makes the harshness of the opposition largely pointless. The best part, however, is that the Republican fight is going to be even better for Obama than the pick itself. And hey, she’ll make a good justice, too.
Reach columnist Greg Ryan at opinion@dailyuw.com.
Moderate
By Katie Paff
Last week, a furor arose in the media as President Barack Obama announced his pick of Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter on the bench as a Supreme Court justice. Unfortunately, for those seeking clarity, it’s difficult to figure out who she really is as it seems that there are two extreme sides to the story.
One side is depicting her as a heroine from a poor upbringing, who managed to overcome poverty and ultimately graduate from Princeton at the top of her class. This side would have us believe that she is a wise and fair judge who has shown balance and reason in her career thus far. The other side expresses concern that she has a history of favoring affirmative action and racial favoritism. One side says she is kind and warm; the other saying that she is some kind of bad-tempered monster. Republicans say they believe she is far left and will be an activist judge, setting off alarm bells among pro-life activists and social conservatives.
Let’s look at her background. Sotomayor has indeed shown a pride in her Puerto Rican heritage and did try to work as an advocate for her fellow Latino students while at Princeton. She dedicated her thesis to modern Puerto Rican history and, while at Yale Law School, was active in minority organizations. She has said she struggled at both schools because she became a target of those who suggested that she only got in because of affirmative action. She later went on to file a formal complaint with the school after one particularly insulting incident.
Sotomayor made a particularly dangerous blunder in 2001 when she stated that a “wise Latina woman” would often reach a better conclusion than a white male. Because of this, she has made race an unavoidable debate topic in her confirmation hearings.
Obviously, this is untrue, and this statement shows extremely poor judgment on her behalf at the time. However, openly attacking her is the wrong way for the GOP to go. Not only does it make the party — already in trouble all around and in bad need of rebranding — look insensitive and shrill, but it fails to recognize the fact that this is a historic nomination and one worth celebrating.
Despite her mistakes, Sotomayor is an incredibly qualified candidate for the job, and her story is inspirational for a person of any race. Graduating summa cum laude from an Ivy League school is no easy feat for anyone, and overcoming humble, immigrant roots to do so just makes it even more commendable. I think it’s fair to say that the charges of her being abrasive are, in part, based on sexism: It seems that whenever women in positions of power choose to openly speak their mind, they are often attacked on this basis.
This is not to say that Sotomayor is the perfect pick for the Supreme Court of the United States. Instead of playing the attack dog or branding her as a racist, Republicans should sit back, acknowledge and praise this historic moment, while also giving her the fair trial she deserves and cross-examining her thoroughly on every important issue. They should take the opportunity to explore every aspect of her judicial philosophy and pick it apart in a no-holds-barred confirmation hearing.
Despite her long career as a federal judge, her record on many crucial issues needs further examination. In her confirmation trials, senators should take the opportunity to question her thoroughly on her approach to the Constitution and to justice. It is important that they figure out whether she will be an activist judge who legislates from the bench or if she’ll adhere strictly to the Constitution.
Ultimately, however, it is important that the nomination process remains focused on the issues and not deteriorate into a game of he-said, she-said and character attacks. This diminishes the stature of the Supreme Court and is just an unnecessary distraction.
Reach columnist Katie Paff at opinion@dailyuw.com.
0 Comments
7 Comments
Good column, Greg. While I agree that her race and gender clearly played a role in the decision to appoint her, Sotomayor has more legal experience than ANY of the current justices did when they were appointed.
"Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh and Tom Tancredo have all loudly denounced her as a racist for suggesting that her experiences as a Hispanic woman would positively influence her decision-making ability."
I gotta say, this is a poor representation of what's been argued regarding her statement. You forgot to mention that she said that her experiences as a Hispanic woman make her experiences "more rich" than that of a white man - not just that her experiences as a Hispanic woman is a positive thing.
You may want to work on at least attempting to give the critiques thrown her way a little more consideration for it's evident in the way you quoted this that you have not.
Curt, if you read the entire context of what she said in that speech, she wasn't trying to suggest that she would make better decisions than white men. She was suggesting that her background would have an impact on her decision making.
What kind of impact? If we assume all things neutral, it would certainly have an impact, but it would be neither negative nor positive. In this context, she was suggesting that her experiences as a Latino women would have a more positive impact on her conclusion than a white man, which suggests that Latino woman > white man.
Clearly, she was suggesting that based on her race alone, she is the better candidate in one way or another.
Unfortunately the UW libraries do not carry the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal –so instead of quoting her article in that journal, I quote a NYTimes article to present a little more complexity in relation to the simplistic and pejorative revisions of Sotomayor’s points as posed by her critics:
“Judge Sotomayor has given several speeches about the importance of diversity. But her 2001 remarks at Berkeley, which were published by the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, went further, asserting that judges’ identities will affect legal outcomes.
“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences,” she said, for jurists who are women and nonwhite, “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”
Her remarks came in the context of reflecting her own life experiences as a Hispanic female judge and on how the increasing diversity on the federal bench “will have an effect on the development of the law and on judging.”
In making her argument, Judge Sotomayor sounded many cautionary notes. She said there was no uniform perspective that all women or members of a minority group have, and emphasized that she was not talking about any individual case.
She also noted that the Supreme Court was uniformly white and male when it delivered historic rulings against racial and sexual discrimination. And she said she tried to question her own “opinions, sympathies and prejudices,” and aspired to impartiality.
Still, Judge Sotomayor questioned whether achieving impartiality “is possible in all, or even, in most, cases.” She added, “And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.””
(Charlie Savage, “A Judge’s View of Judging Is on the Record,” New York Times, May 14, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/...)
An interesting blurb on the terms “Hispanic” and “Latino”, neither of which are racial classifications, but rather linked with the scope of Spanish colonialism or genealogical ties to Latin American nation-states, etc. “Hispanic” is not an term that defines a particular ethnicity, and while “latino” can be (specifically non-African and non-indigenous people in Latin American countries or of Latin American origin) it is often used here in the States to homogenously describe multiple ethnicities – as a “race” of people that we can conveniently ascribe common behaviors and characteristics.
“Though often used interchangeably in American English, Hispanic and Latino are not identical terms, and in certain contexts the choice between them can be significant. Hispanic, from the Latin word for “Spain,” has the broader reference, potentially encompassing all Spanish-speaking peoples in both hemispheres and emphasizing the common denominator of language among communities that sometimes have little else in common. Latino—which in Spanish means "Latin" but which as an English word is probably a shortening of the Spanish word latinoamericano—refers more exclusively to persons or communities of Latin American origin. Of the two, only Hispanic can be used in referring to Spain and its history and culture; a native of Spain residing in the United States is a Hispanic, not a Latino, and one cannot substitute Latino in the phrase the Hispanic influence on native Mexican cultures without garbling the meaning. In practice, however, this distinction is of little significance when referring to residents of the United States, most of whom are of Latin American origin and can theoretically be called by either word.
A more important distinction concerns the sociopolitical rift that has opened between Latino and Hispanic in American usage. For a certain segment of the Spanish-speaking population, Latino is a term of ethnic pride and Hispanic a label that borders on the offensive. According to this view, Hispanic lacks the authenticity and cultural resonance of Latino, with its Spanish sound and its ability to show the feminine form Latina when used of women. Furthermore, Hispanic—the term used by the U.S. Census Bureau and other government agencies—is said to bear the stamp of an Anglo establishment far removed from the concerns of the Spanish-speaking community. While these views are strongly held by some, they are by no means universal, and the division in usage seems as related to geography as it is to politics, with Latino widely preferred in California and Hispanic the more usual term in Florida and Texas. Even in these regions, however, usage is often mixed, and it is not uncommon to find both terms used by the same writer or speaker.” (http://www.answers.com/topic/hispanic )
The New York Times has reprinted Sotomayor's lecture:
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