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Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s controversial remark about wise Latina judges has appeared in more than one speech. Sotomayor frequently remarked on her ethnicity and gender in 84 speeches released by the White House yesterday, according to reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post. The speeches by Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent, show the Supreme Court nominee “is driven by a powerful ethnic pride and a belief that she has an obligation to lift up fellow people of color,” the Post says. Earlier reports of the controversial remark identified a 2001 law speech at the University of...

Greg Sargent reports she made an almost identical remark in 1994: “Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that “a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion in dueling cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes the line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, if Prof. Martha Minnow is correct, there can never be a universal definition of ‘wise.’ Second, I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her...

I’ve just obtained a speech that Sonia Sotomayor gave in 1994, in which she made a comment virtually identical to the “wise Latina” one from 2001 that has generated so much controversy. And though the 1994 speech was disclosed to Republican Senators as part of her confirmation for Court of Appeals in 1998, there’s no sign that anyone objected to it in any way. The revelation raises fresh questions as to why the 2001 comments generated the controversy they did, and suggests that the comments are not as controversial as her critics claim. A copy of the 1994 speech was...

Sonia Sotomayor: ‘A Latina Judge’s Voice’/b> Judge Sonia Sotomayor's 2001 address to the 'Raising the Bar' symposium at the UC Berkeley School of Law Note: Federal Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, nominated by President Obama on May 26, 2009, to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, delivered this talk on Oct. 26, 2001, as the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture. She spoke at a UC Berkeley School of Law symposium titled "Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation." The symposium was co-hosted by the La Raza Law Journal, the Berkeley...

Jim Manzi on the argument from the left that Sotomayor's "wise Latina" comment is being taken out of context: I’m not so sure it looks better in context. ~~~ ...Sotomayor makes the indisputable point that decisions made by judges are at least partially impacted by their biological characteristics and life experiences. Human judgment clearly plays a role in such decisions; hence the need for human judges, as opposed to “law interpreting algorithms” in the first place. A key point, of course, is that in the passage under consideration, she goes beyond this and asserts not just that her decisions would...

Imagine Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor sitting in a jury pool for a gender and racial discrimination case involving a minority woman who is suing her employer. During jury selection, plaintiff and defense attorneys closely question each prospective juror concerning their background and views on racial and gender issues. In response to an attorney's question as to whether she can reach a fair and unbiased decision based only on the facts, Sotomayor responds: "I would hope that a wise Latina, such as I, with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a...

As Republicans continue to hammer Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor for a 2001 assertion that’s become known as the “wise Latina” remark, her backers are struggling to come up with a single coherent line of defense. In the past few days, supporters confronted with the remark have offered a range of divergent tactics and tones, offering explanations that span from apologetic to defiant to suggesting Sotomayor may have been joking. President Obama himself addressed the bubbling controversy, which is emerging as among the leading GOP lines of attack against Sotomayor, asserting on Friday Sotomayor “would have restated” the comment if...

Sotomayor can keep playing the poor, underprivileged Boricua, but let's be real, she's spent her childhood in private school environments, early adulthood amongst the Ivy League elite, and most of her adulthood as a corporate attorney and judge living in Greenwich Village, where the average household income tops that of the entire NY metro area and 98% of the residents are White. I guess that's what she means by her rich experience.

She was incredible, amazing and remarkable three of the many adjectives used in news coverage to describe the Supreme Court nominee.

When police wanted to question a teacher accused of having an affair with an eighth-grader at a private religious school, she was out of town -- vacationing at Disney World with the student. Upon her return Saturday, 32-year-old Maria Guzman Hernandez, a sixth-grade teacher at Hialeah's Our Lady of Charity, admitted to Hialeah police she'd had sex with the 15-year-old. Hernandez was charged with sexual battery on a child over whom she had custodial authority, a charge similar to statutory rape. The boy's mother, who acknowledged to both police and Department of Children & Families investigators that she approved of...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7, 2007 – Six military women of Hispanic descent were honored for their service to the nation at Latina Style Magazine’s 4th annual awards luncheon held here Sept. 6. Army Sgt. Maj. Venus Carpenter is one of six Hispanic military women who were honored at Latina Style Magazine’s annual awards luncheon held here Sept. 6. Photo by Gerry J. Gilmore  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The Defense Department co-hosted the event, titled “Latinas in the Global Fight on Terror.” The luncheon traditionally heralds other Hispanic-American Heritage Month activities, held Sept. 15 through Oct. 15. Award recipients...

The immigration and security debate, which has sparked huge demonstrations in recent days by Hispanic residents of cities around the country, comes at a crucial moment for both parties. Over the last three national elections, persistent appeals by Mr. Bush and other Republican leaders have helped double their party's share of the Hispanic vote, to more than 40 percent in 2004 from about 20 percent in 1996. As a result, Democrats can no longer rely on the country's 42 million Hispanic residents as a natural part of their base. In a lunch meeting of Senate Republicans this week, Senator Mel...

Scholars say Matos is part of a growing number of Latin women converting to Islam for its emphasis on family, piety and clearly defined women's roles, values converts say were once integral to Hispanic culture but have waned after years of assimilation. The women are among 40,000 Hispanic converts to Islam in the United States, according to the Islamic Society of North America.

The New Underground Railroad Thousands of women come to New York each year for late-term abortions. A hundred New Yorkers take them in. Haven Coalition volunteer Suzanne in the space where she hosts women who travel to New York for abortions. (Photo credit: Donna Ferrato) It’s 8 p.m. on a Friday, and Adeena is lying on a bed in my apartment, squirming in pain, her pants unzipped to reveal a disturbingly large belly. We’re watching a DVD she chose from the corner Blockbuster: Coach Carter, starring Samuel Jackson and Ashanti. Jackson has just taken a job at a ghetto...

UNION CITY, N.J. — On a hot summer day, Stefani Perada took a break from her job in West New York, N.J., and stepped outside in her long jilbab, the flowing clothes clothes worn by many Muslim women. Meanwhile, other Latinas in the mostly Hispanic neighborhood were taking advantage of the warm day, walking around in shorts and midriff-exposing halter tops. Perada, 19, who converted to Islam just over a year ago, is still trying to become acclimated to certain customs, such as the jilbab and the hijab, which covers her head and hair.

Nearly three weeks after Hurricane Katrina raged ashore, Gov. Kathleen Blanco still wants one question answered. Where were the buses? Hours after the hurricane hit Aug. 29, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a plan to send 500 commercial buses into New Orleans to rescue thousands of people left stranded on highways, overpasses and in shelters, hospitals and homes. On the day of the storm, or perhaps the day after, FEMA turned down the state's suggestion to use school buses because they are not air conditioned, Blanco said Friday in an interview. Even after levees broke and residents were crowding...

TAMPA - As a child, Amy Perez attended different Christian churches, praying at Catholic Masses and singing at Baptist revivals. But she never felt satisfied with the answers those faiths provided to her questions. At 12, Perez left Webb Middle School for the Universal Academy of Florida, a Muslim school in Tampa, because she did not like the cliques and social scene at Webb. And she wanted to learn more about Islam.

Birth rate among Roseland teens, especially Latinas, alarms officials Teen pregnancy has become such a serious concern in southwest Santa Rosa that medical providers plan to ask the school board to let them prescribe contraceptives at the health center on the Elsie Allen High School campus. "It's so prevalent that it's having a serious impact on our community," said Enrique Gonzalez-Mendez, medical director of the Elsie Allen Health Center, which sees five teenage pregnancies a month. "It's a tragedy to see the potential of so many of our young men and women hindered by pregnancies." Roseland, which health officials have...

One family's tamalada marks its 32nd year. By Suzannah Gonzales AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Sunday, December 05, 2004 The aproned women crowded around a square table in the kitchen of the Balcones home Friday night, their hands busy and eyes focused on the work in front of them. Piles of masa-covered ojas (corn husks), bowls of masa (corn dough) and containers of pork roast obscured the tabletop. With paint scrapers, some of the dozen or so women spread a thin layer of masa on the shucks. Others put a few spoonfuls of meat in a thin column on each masa-covered oja, rolled...

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