Obama’s poor choice a cautionary tale

The Australian Blogs ^ | June 3, 2009 | Janet Albrechtsen

[Schnucki]

DESCRIBING what you do for a living is usually fairly straightforward. Maybe you’re a lawyer or an accountant, perhaps a plumber or an electrician. We all understand what these people do. A friend of mine recently came across someone who described herself as a “cross-cultural consultant”. What she did was not entirely clear but it had a warm and embracing ring to it.

That same ambiguity emerged last week when US President Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor as the next justice of the US Supreme Court. Obama made so much of her impeccable cultural credentials - she is the first Hispanic woman to be nominated to the nation’s highest court - and her brilliant life experiences that I wondered whether she was indeed a lawyer. Would her new business card recount her law degrees or simply read: Cross-Cultural Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States?

Why should we, in Australia, care about such matters? For starters, the nomination process for judges in the US gives you an idea of what happens when a judiciary is empowered to make sweeping social and political decisions that we entrust to our elected parliamentarians. The US Constitution delivers judges such power in spades. Accordingly, last week the nomination of Sotomayor was reported, analysed, criticised and debated in newspapers, in journals, on television, on radio. Her utterances were dissected on the internet and posted on YouTube.

Contrast the quiet process in Australia. Remember when the most recent new judge was appointed to our High Court? Many will struggle to remember the judge’s name. A small report here and there. Perhaps a longer feature about the new judge. Then we move on. And that is as it should be.

Not in the US. Appointing judges in the US is a political process. Obama’s

[napscoordinator]

The next pick will be much worse...guarantee it.