Posted on 02/14/2012 3:57:46 AM PST by Kaslin
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke to the interns of the House and Senate in June of 2010. At a Q&A afterwards, she was asked multiple questions from interns on a wide variety of topics including negative law and utilitarianism, conflicts of legal views and personal views, and the Yale/Harvard situation then pending in the court.
One of my former students, a senate intern, got up to ask a question and was the very last one allowed to speak. He asked her "What should American culture and society look to as the source for just laws?" Justice Sotomayor paused, looked at him for a long time, and slowly said, "What a very interesting question." She then looked at my former student again for a very long time. Finally she very slowly said, "I don't think I've ever thought of that question in that form before."
When she finally got around to answering, Justice Sotomayor proceeded to say that when making decisions, she focuses on the dignity of the individual. She then confessed she didn't know how we all would judge; saying that’s just what she focuses on. It was really fascinating for a young intern to hear. It really appeared to him – and to other interns present - that she really had not asked herself that question before. It reminded me of a speech Sotomayor once gave at UC-Berkeley. I now revisit some of her remarks from that speech – not so much for what it says about Sotomayor but for what it says about the future of America under the leadership of a postmodern judiciary:
Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
This is an important admission on Sotomayor’s behalf. One can imagine how experiences color one’s perception of facts. But is race so central to the judgment of cases that it justifies the avoidance of certain facts altogether? Does race blind us to certain facts? Not according to Sotomayor. It simply justifies the willful disregard of certain facts.
For people of color and women lawyers, what does and should being an ethnic minority mean in your lawyering? For men lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach? For all of us, how do we change the facts that in every task force study of gender and race bias in the courts, women and people of color, lawyers and judges alike, report in significantly higher percentages than white men that their gender and race has shaped their careers, from hiring, retention to promotion and that a statistically significant number of women and minority lawyers and judges, both alike, have experienced bias in the courtroom?
Bizarre isn’t it? In a rambling fashion Sotomayor – a supporter of race preferences – complains that race shapes one’s career path. Only a couple of paragraphs after an admission that her race justifies her willful disregard of facts, she complains that race bias still exists in the courtroom.
Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me require. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.
But are our judgments merely the sum total of our experiences? That is what my former student was asking Justice Sotomayor. He wanted to know whether there is some transcendent source of justice to which we turn. Are we to answer to a Higher Authority when we judge? Or do we simply judge in accordance with the narrative of our own experience? If so, how do we ever transcend bias? Is that even a goal to which we aspire?
There is always a danger embedded in relative morality, but since judging is a series of choices that we must make, that I am forced to make, I hope that I can make them by informing myself on the questions I must not avoid asking and continuously pondering. We, I mean all of us in this room, must continue individually and in voices united in organizations that have supported this conference, to think about these questions and to figure out how we go about creating the opportunity for there to be more women and people of color on the bench so we can finally have statistically significant numbers to measure the differences we will and are making.
Yes, there is a danger imbedded in relative morality. It is that it follows our conduct rather than preceding our conduct. It is that it justifies our conduct rather than informing our conduct. And that is precisely why we must search for a source of justice – or a Source of Justice – that is not contingent upon our own perceptions or experiences.
We may well choose to wake up tomorrow and renounce the Law of Gravity. But that doesn’t mean we are free to float among the clouds. Increasingly, judges are doing something similar with the Moral Law. That is why we see a judiciary with its feet now planted firmly in mid-air.
I’m proud of my former Summit Ministries student – the Senate intern who asked Justice Sotomayor that question. But I’m a little disturbed she had never heard the question before. That means no one in the actual Senate raised the question during her confirmation. And that confirms some suspicions I’ve had for quite some time.
You are evil
I heard about some guy who graduated from Harvard Law School as the Editor of the Law Review and the best job he could get was Community Organizer. Shame, really. No, racism.
Leni
That arrogant, lazy, lying pos occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave does indeed have to be defeated in November. His desire to destruct this great Nation can not be allowed
When you start talking about ‘evil’, take a good long hard look at Senator John McStain, who threw the election to 0bama with his “America has nothing to fear from an 0bama Administration” prattle. You need to get over that kneejerk reaction of ‘oh he was a POW, so he gets a pass’. You know that what I stated was the absolute truth. If McCain had croaked in ‘67 America would have indeed been better off.
You think waving around your husband’s service in Vietnam somehow validates McCain? Did your husband end up embracing his Communist enemies, working for the benefit of Hanoi in getting them ‘favored nation trading status’? Did your husband stab our POW/MIA’s in the back like McCain did?
I’m certain that he did not. The fact is, this isn’t about your husband or any other veteran. It is about the traitor John McCain, and unfortunately for you “you can’t handle the truth”.
instead of inflicting our Nation with his progressive/Communist-sympathizing crapola over the years.
...now now, let’s not be tooooo bitter about Manchurian McCain hugging the VC vets in the Senate and teaming with I’m reporting for duty Kerry to bury whatever and whoever was still captive in Nam while hammering grieving families with insults... after all, there was oil to drill for and money to be made in SE Asia, don’t ya know?
ymmv
Who cares about Meghan McCain, she’s a nothing and it totally irrelevant
Why would she mention the law? It’s not like it applies to her or the rest of the Washington DC elite. Laws are for us little people to obey (as long as we aren’t Holder’s people).
In the future don’t post to me or any of my threads anymore, okay
Don’t even try to pull that crap with me. If I see something you have posted and I wish to comment on it, I will.
Deal with it.
glad most of those guys are trained lawyers, with insight to not only the *laws* of man, but also experience in application of those, to the benchmark of the Laws of God.../eyeroll...
Stotomayor is an adminited incompetent who knows she is only on the bench because of a quota.
On merit alone she would never be hired by any reputable firm.
Obama was NOT THE FRICKIN' EDITOR of the HLR. He was the PRESIDENT.
He wrote nothing. Edited nothing. He was an "Administrator."
He is by all sane accounts, very bad at writing and even worse at editing. He has always had "people" for that. E.G., he has NOTHING to do with what he is reading from the two teleprompters he uses ... even to address kindergarteners.
His duties on the HLR were very largely ceremonial ... with a few production details thrown in. He didn't do those very well, being best known for showing up at cocktail parties as the "exotic." The HLR actually has a paid professional staff that handles the day-to-day operations. Those few duties he did have, he usually screwed up, so the rest of HLR people had to cover him.
Unlike Columbia, where the guy was apparently entirely under the radar, quite a few people know about Obama at Harvard Law. Their reports are not exactly ringing endorsements.
You and I are in agreement.
Guilty, in every possible way.
Thank you, Kenny, for correcting Nobama’s title at HLR. I don’t care if he was the janitor. A black, left-wing Harvard Law graduate should have his pick of a thousand jobs upon graduation. Community Organizer would not be the one most people would choose. He was being groomed from Day 1 as a politico.
Thank you, Kenny, for correcting Nobama’s title at HLR. I don’t care if he was the janitor. A black, left-wing Harvard Law graduate should have his pick of a thousand jobs upon graduation. Community Organizer would not be the one most people would choose. He was being groomed from Day 1 as a politico.
Yes. And one must be impressed by the strength and depth of the Left's network. From ole Stanley Dunham to Frank Marshall Davis to Lawrence Goldyn to Bill Ayers to Harvard Law ... kinda reminds me of the old Vince Lombardi Green Bay power sweep ... and apparently just as unstoppable.
Then to have it all come back to having Valerie Jarrett, FMD's relative, running the show at the WH! That's tight. Through it all, none but the brave at Freep seem to realize that this fellow is an astounding dummy of the first water, whose every move is choreographed like a puppet show. He just sort of hangs out in his den with Reggie and Valerie, waiting for instructions. IMHO, this is the true JFK Legacy. Jack told his pals, "Nothing to it." One could be President in under two hours a day, leaving substantial free time for the whoring and working with the Mafia to poison Fidel. This of course served as a model for BJ Clinton. But this guy? Not even an amusing hobby beyond his wretched golf at which he cheats, and a big-screen TV. He is the first Spectator-President, watching the world go by, confident that his handlers and the MSM will spin whatever TF happens to credit he can claim. "Arab Spring?" Hooray Hooray. "Libya?" Ditto, baby! Waddaguy!
This kefuffle with the Catholics? Brilliant. Team Obama loses on abortion? No problem. They attack on (would you believe) "Contraception." But never fear, those receiving some government benefits will receive their absentee ballots and have a damn good shot at returning the Mombasa MF to his comfy leather chair, his 52-inch TV, open bar, the gentle ministrations of Reggie, and the directions and orders of Valerie.
Hell of a thing.
Although the lesbo thing is a dead cert, Kagan actually represents the CPUSA. Her family go way back in NYS Stalinist circles ... very active Communists ... as a look a old dead JEH's files would certainly show ... that is, if the The Mombasa MF's people haven't gotten to the filing cabinet.
Rummy, when it comes to Kagan, get your mind off Kweers, Koncentrate on the Kommie Konnection. And while we are munching 'Special K' look up her ancestral Soviet Konnection, Komrade Kaganovitch.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazar_Kaganovich
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.