Down With Sotomayor, Most Evil Spic Ever
By Larry Johnson on May 27, 2009 at 8:50 AM in Current Affairs
(Bumped up from yesterday afternoon.)
Listening to the venom of conservatives directed at Judge Sonya Sotomayor today is disturbing and disgusting on several levels. Conservatives still smart over the liberal assault of Judge Robert Bork. So their response? Try to do the same to Sotomayor. I just listened to Sean Hannity “report” that she’s a “bully and not very smart.” Hey, what do you expect of some Puerto Rican broad?
The nonsense being pushed, i.e., that she is a judicial activist who wants to make law from the bench, is laughable but that is the key talking point for folks who want to savage her. Painting her as an Spanish Aunt Jemima who is not too bright is beyond the pale. Let’s see the proof. I did not like what was done to Bork by the left and I do not like what so-called conservatives are trying to do to assassinate the character of this judge.
Those who know her and have worked with her like her.
Daily Beast has a great piece by Stephen Carter, a Yale Law Professor. Carter writes:
I have known her since we were law students together at Yale, back in the ‘70s. We worked at the same law firm over the summer, and I edited her note for the Yale Law Journal, a thoughtful piece of scholarship in which she did a fantastic job of navigating between two extremes to find a plausible and pragmatic and by-no-means-obvious answer on a difficult and even abstruse question of constitutional law: the “equal footing” doctrine for the admission of new states to the Union.
Around the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has developed a reputation as a thoughtful moderate, with liberal leanings, to be sure, but hardly a firebrand on a mission. She also writes excellent opinions. As a matter of fact, I teach a couple of her decisions in my intellectual-property courses, because they are scholarly, clear, and fair-minded.
I suppose the left will not be entirely happy with the president’s choice, and the right, not entirely unhappy. Sotomayor is a former prosecutor, and her criminal-law decisions as an appellate judge seem to me to have a bit of a pro-prosecution bent. For example, her position in United States v. Santa, allowing the admission of evidence seized by the police in the course of a mistaken arrest, eventually was adopted by the Supreme Court.
On the other hand, her participation in Ricci v. DeStefano, the controversial case involving the New Haven Fire Department, is already being waved as if it were a red flag. It isn’t. Ricci (which in any event will be decided by the Supreme Court any day now) involved the decision of the City of New Haven, Connecticut, to throw out a promotion test after not a single black applicant passed it. Black applicants were more than one-third of the pool, and the city was terrified of being sued for racial discrimination. It was, but by the test takers who passed. Maybe New Haven overreacted; maybe not. Few issues have proved as difficult for the nation to resolve as overcoming the lingering legacies of slavery and racial discrimination. How precisely we do that, when we see the results manifest, remains perhaps the greatest moral challenge to America and Americans. People of good will can hold more than one position. To pretend, as some already are, that Judge Sotomayor’s position is outside the mainstream is absurd.
But what does Carter know? He’s just some liberal, nappy headed nigger. Right? Let’s ignore his actual accomplishments. I mean, rather than deal with the substance of his comments let’s just dismiss him as a fool because of what we think he believes politically and what he looks like.
And Sotomayor? Closet lesbian. Manhater. Does not get along well with others. Not too bright. Does not ask penetrating questions. Most liberal judge since Karl Marx. Did I mention judicial activist? Yep, based on her making one off-hand joke at a conference she is now the equivalent of the British Parliament and has passed a bevy of laws by her rulings. Which ones? Can’t find them right now but I’m sure they are there.
Let’s give the lady a chance to speak and to answer for herself. Let’s judge her by the content of her heart and her character. The practice of folks on both the left and the right to dismiss people like Bork or Sotomayor with strident smears is an unfortunate development in our politics. I want to hear what she has to say and how she answers questions. If she conducts herself like former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, then I will oppose her. If she proves to be a smart, intellectually honest judge then put her on the court.
I am just sick of the hypocrisy on both the left and the right. Let’s hope that comity prevails in this debate.
UPDATED–And Limbaugh has now weighed in calling Sotomayor a racist. Okay. Here’s an intelligence test. Read the following quote from Judge Sotomayor and show me where she is being “racist.”
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice 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 Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, 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.
Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.
However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. 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.
If being thoughtful and honest constitutes being a racist the she is guilty. But damn it, she makes sense to me. I guess I’m a racist too. Just another self-hating white man.
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