A Court-Jester

"Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge (Miriam) Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice (Sandra Day) O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure that I agree with the statement. I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."  Sonia Sotomayor

 

The last sentence, of course, is asinine. However, the lead-up is common sense, even if jurists rarely admit to this reality. But, it's the narrow, leftist, group-identity obsessed version of the common sense notion that different experiences lead to different opinions. A broader version would note that people of the same sex and ethnicity may also have highly divergent life experiences that help to form different bases for their opinions. She also discounts the value of intellect and professional competence, though I admit these are generally of less consequence in the political rulings with which she seems primarily to be concerned.

 

The Supreme Court's decisions are either political or technical. Disagreements usually arise on the political questions, howsoever they may be disguised behind more or less clever facades of euphemistic rhetoric and irrelevant technicalities.

 

I think other parts of the speech from which this quote was pulled are equally disturbing. Elsewhere, she basically makes an argument (which I might add is poorly constructed as a matter of pure logic and full of holes even half-wits can see) for imposing ethnically-based quotas to determine who should sit on the federal bench--and, presumably, by extension, to determine who should obtain all other government offices. Never mind who is actually qualified on individual merit for such appointments--for every uptick in the Hispanic percentage of the population, more Hispanic judges must be appointed. This consists with her ruling against the New Haven firefighters, whose system of promotion based on individual achievement she curtly tossed out the window: apparently, in promotions, color is more important than competence. In short, she has limited faith in meritocracy and blithely privileges group rights over individual rights--thus undermining two of the essential principles upon which this country is founded--and on the application of which principles we had been making constant improvements until the socialist breakthrough into the mainstream in the 1960s.

 

Politically, she's a member of the party of resentment.

Intellectually, she's too mediocre to inflict much influence on the Supreme Court beyond that granted by her single vote.