quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Senoj, If I understand you, you don't think that understanding basics of constitutional law should be a bare minimum we should expect from Supreme Court nominees?
I'm not sure how to define the basics of constitutional law. I'm not sure in what sense Harriet Miers failed. Was she not able to recite the Bill of Rights? Did she not understand the significance of dangling penumbra?
Sorry, I guess I'm being a little facetious. Obviously I wouldn't accept Dave Kovic as a Supreme Court Justice. I just think a constant push for more and more "qualified" applicants leads to ideological divisiveness. Academic and professional reputations in law are made on the strength of philosophy not of empathy (or particularity, or ability to discern shades of gray). And if ideological rigidity is at the heart of the qualifications, then I think they will inherently lead to a critically unstable and politicized Court.
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Obviously, there are more detailed resources, but here's a quote from the wikipedia article:
quote:On October 3, 2005, Bush nominated Miers to serve as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Miers' nomination was criticized from people all over the political spectrum based on her never having served as a judge, her perceived lack of intellectual rigor, her close personal ties to Bush, and her lack of a clear record on issues likely to be encountered as a Supreme Court Justice. Many notable conservatives vigorously criticized her nomination, and numerous conservative groups normally considered part of Bush's political base planned to mount an organized opposition campaign.
Miers met with senators after her nomination was announced, and in those meetings she was ill-prepared and uninformed on the law.[19] Senator Tom Coburn told her privately that she "flunked" and "[was] going to have to say something next time."[20] In mock sessions with lawyers, Miers had difficulty expressing her views and explaining basic constitutional law concepts.[21] Miers had no experience in constitutional law, and did not have extensive litigation experience; at her Texas law firm, she had been more of a manager.[22] Miers had rarely handled appeals and did not understand the complicated constitutional concepts senators asked of her.[23] To White House lawyers, Miers was "less an attorney than a law firm manager and bar association president."[24]
Early one-on-one meetings between Miers and the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee were said to have gone poorly, and the White House considered suspending them to focus on preparation for the confirmation hearings. In an unprecedented move, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter and ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy also requested that Miers re-do some of her answers to the questionnaire submitted to her by the Committee, noting that her responses were "inadequate," "insufficient," and "insulting" because she failed or refused to adequately answer various questions with acceptable accuracy or with sufficient detail.[25] Miers also privately expressed a belief in the right to privacy to the pro-choice Arlen Specter, only to later deny that she had communicated that.[26] Her answers also included an error on constitutional law where she mentioned an explicit constitutional right for proportional representation; though many court rulings have found that legislative and other districts of unequal population violate the equal protection clause, the right to proportional districts is not explicitly mentioned in the United States Constitution.[27]
There's standards and then there's standards. I'm unsympathetic towards people pushing ideological purity as a primary qualification, but I think that standards of ability are very important things to have. It seems to me that you are conflating the two and saying that we shouldn't really have either.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: There's standards and then there's standards. I'm unsympathetic towards people pushing ideological purity as a primary qualification, but I think that standards of ability are very important things to have. It seems to me that you are conflating the two and saying that we shouldn't really have either.
My point isn't to argue against litmus-test style standards. I think everyone agrees they're a bad idea (everyone who isn't a member of NARAL or NRA, at least). I'm arguing that, due to a preference in US law for philosophy and ideology over particularity and empathy (for lack of a better word), the "better" a candidate's resume (educationally and professionally), the more likely they are to be bound to a black-and-white understanding of the law and unable to employ decision making criteria that don't agree with their judicial philosophy. Thus a constant drive for more and more qualified jurists will lead to a more and more ideologically rigid, divided, unstable Court.
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quote: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.
Thanks for quoting the full text here...I started to look for it when I read the part about the wise latina woman and then thought to come here, in case someone had.
I'm trying to be open minded about this, but her statement really does come across as racist. I do understand where she's coming from and I agree that there needs to be a diversity of background and experience on the bench. Wisdom comes from experience and the narrower the experiences of those in power, the less wisdom the group as a whole will command.
But that's not what she says. In fact, the specific line about the wise latina woman doesn't even seem to be referring specifically to decisions affecting latinos, though I've read it 3 times now to see if that might have been the case. She says that the wise latina woman will come to a "better conclusion" more often than the white man. If she meant something else by this, then her poorly chosen wording is a doozy.
In fact, while I agree that no one will agree on a single definition of wisdom and that we all come into decision making with our personal experiences and biases in tow, I think that the truly wise person goes out of their way to try to see things from the other side. That goes both ways.
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quote:I think that the truly wise person goes out of their way to try to see things from the other side. That goes both ways.
Judge Sotomayor agrees with you. But it takes effort and energy to go out of your way, energy and effort that could be used in making a wise decision. Unlike the "old white men" who have to make that effort when it comes to issues of gender, class, and even race, her experience means she does not have to make that effort.
Racism is the argument that my Race is better than yours so under any circumstances, I am better than you.
What she says is that the experience of being a Latina woman allows her wisdom that white men have missed.
Should she have acknowledged that old white men have lived lives and gained Wisdom Latina women can never gain? Yes.
Is this a reason to run in fear from her as a justice? No.
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quote:I think that the truly wise person goes out of their way to try to see things from the other side. That goes both ways.
Judge Sotomayor agrees with you. But it takes effort and energy to go out of your way, energy and effort that could be used in making a wise decision. Unlike the "old white men" who have to make that effort when it comes to issues of gender, class, and even race, her experience means she does not have to make that effort.
Racism is the argument that my Race is better than yours so under any circumstances, I am better than you.
What she says is that the experience of being a Latina woman allows her wisdom that white men have missed.
Should she have acknowledged that old white men have lived lives and gained Wisdom Latina women can never gain? Yes.
Is this a reason to run in fear from her as a justice? No.
I never said it was. And I did understand her point (in fact, I spent several paragraphs on it), but I think her comment was racist.
I haven't made any decisions about what I think of her as a justice. Information about her is too new and so far completely biased by the source presenting it.
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quote:Yesterday on his radio show, conservative host G. Gordon Liddy continued the right wing’s all-out assault on Judge Sonia Sotomayor. First, just like Tom Tancredo, Liddy slammed Sotomayor’s affiliation with the civil rights group La Raza — and referred to the Spanish language as “illegal alien“:
LIDDY: I understand that they found out today that Miss Sotomayor is a member of La Raza, which means in illegal alien, “the race.” And that should not surprise anyone because she’s already on record with a number of racist comments.
Finished with the race-based attack, Liddy moved on to denigrate Sotomayor’s gender:
LIDDY: Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then.
Finally, Liddy disputed the entire idea that there’s anything wrong with the paucity of women and total lack of Hispanics on the Court:
LIDDY: And everybody is cheering because Hispanics and females have been, quote, underrepresented, unquote. And as you pointed out, which I thought was quite insightful, the Supreme Court is not designed to be and should not be a representative body.
nur nur nur nur nur nur nur
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quote:But that's not what she says. In fact, the specific line about the wise latina woman doesn't even seem to be referring specifically to decisions affecting latinos, though I've read it 3 times now to see if that might have been the case. She says that the wise latina woman will come to a "better conclusion" more often than the white man. If she meant something else by this, then her poorly chosen wording is a doozy.
If she were talking about a Latina woman being wiser than a white man across the board, in all situations, why would she then go on to talk specifically about sexual harassment cases, which offer a stark example of demographic disparity between the judge and the judged?
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What I wish more than anything was that the ones raising the reverse racism charges weren't Rush Limbaugh, Liddy, or Beck because "reverse racism" is a debate we need to have in this country. The thing is we need to have a serious debate, one where we can actually deal with those issues and possibly find a way to sooth the savage so to speak.
I think much of the anger that exists today in the white conservative male, the prototype portrayed by Beck or Limbaugh or Hannity, is the anger that they feel over the results of affirmative action and minority expansion. In some ways, it is understandable and completely plausible that a white male in America could grow resentful or angry at the state of affairs in America, and I think it is very important to understand that anger and not dismiss it as the ravings of out of touch white men. Of course, we see that anger in the anger over Obama's election and Sotomayor's selection to the SCOTUS, especially in the unbelievable attacks Ms. Sotomayor has endured, and yet, I think that if we can understand that anger, we can understand how it might be possible to build bridges and find common ground.
In that sense, I think Ms. Sotomayor can serve a grander purpose, one where we can talk about the true nature of the Judiciary, activism and the bench, affirmative action, and other issues that are important. What I would not advocate is her selection to SCOTUS on those reasons alone, but I do not feel that is the case.
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quote:But that's not what she says. In fact, the specific line about the wise latina woman doesn't even seem to be referring specifically to decisions affecting latinos, though I've read it 3 times now to see if that might have been the case. She says that the wise latina woman will come to a "better conclusion" more often than the white man. If she meant something else by this, then her poorly chosen wording is a doozy.
If she were talking about a Latina woman being wiser than a white man across the board, in all situations, why would she then go on to talk specifically about sexual harassment cases, which offer a stark example of demographic disparity between the judge and the judged?
Yes, she does go on to talk about some of that, but it doesn't change the fact that the statement everyone is talking about, even in context, comes across as racist. It is neither properly led into nor directly qualified afterward.
I really hate to even come close to agreeing with Rush Limbaugh on anything -- really, really, REALLY hate it -- and I don't completely agree. I'm not going to just shoot off the mouth in judgment of this woman and call her a reverse racist for what may have been a poor choice of words. But I will say that what she says in that line comes across as racist, whether she meant it to or not, and that in future speeches she may want to consider hiring a professional speech writer.
On a slightly related note: She does make a point of going through some cases of minorities and women getting the short end of the stick. And when she does that, she implies that the men who made those decisions did so because they were white men who couldn't possibly understand. I actually disagree somewhat; I would say instead they were a product of their generations' outdated thinking. I suspect today, even white men would be more sensitive to some of those situations because we (the entire nation) has spent the last 40 years talking about it nonstop.
That said, I do appreciate the diversity. I just don't think that the racial and gender diversity (because lets face it, they're all lawyers) is necessarily a way to hand down wiser decisions. The unfairly judged parties in the future may or may not be latinos or women. They may, instead, be homosexuals. Does she have a perspective to add on that? Or something else, the next battle, the one we don't even really know about yet? The one that if it came up today we'd all have a knee-jerk reaction to because that just isn't the way things are DONE.
It's nice that we're starting to get a more racially diverse supreme court, but it doesn't excuse each and every one of them from the need to try to see the other perspective in cases that may seem utterly alien to them and in cases where not a single one of them will be able to claim their background will give them the default better choice.
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There is a tactic I've seen used often in Political fights, most often noted when coming from the right...Attack them on your weakness.
This means that where John Kerry served honorably in the Vietnam War, and President Bush served stateside, the Republican's didn't avoid the issue of Military Service--they went full out and attacked John Kerry's service.
In this way, any attacks on President Bush's service would A)remind people of the issues they were creating about John Kerry's service, and B)make those attacking President Bush's service appear to be doing so not out of concern over his bravery or military skills, but as only a political diversion.
I've seen this many times, on many issues.
So here we have people like Liddy and Limbaugh who's humor is often racially based, claiming that she, not they, are the racists.
I say check the closets for those who are abusing this quote the most, and see if there are any sheets hanging in there.
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quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: There is a tactic I've seen used often in Political fights, most often noted when coming from the right...Attack them on your weakness.
So here we have people like Liddy and Limbaugh who's humor is often racially based, claiming that she, not they, are the racists.
I say check the closets for those who are abusing this quote the most, and see if there are any sheets hanging in there.
Both right and left are guilty of hypocrisy. Both right and left will accuse the other of doing the same thing they were defending against a moment ago. A lot of it has to do with shifting power.
quote:Originally posted by Danlo the Wild: Actions speak louder than words.
99% of all American Supreme Court Judges have been white men.
Does that mean that white men make better choices than women or non white men?
I think it's silly so many people get wrapped up in that one sentence.
I don't understand your point. 99% of all Supreme Court Justices have been white men so....what? Are we saying they've all made bad decisions?
I often think it's silly when people get wrapped up in one sentence, but that's the way political debates work. It's the way they work here. A person could make a brilliant point but the next post, someone will quote one poorly phrased line and we get off on a ridiculous tangent about it. Drives me up the wall some days. Other days, I'm probably guilty of it.
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quote:In sum, in an eleven-year career on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has participated in roughly 100 panel decisions involving questions of race and has disagreed with her colleagues in those cases (a fair measure of whether she is an outlier) a total of 4 times. Only one case (Gant) in that entire eleven years actually involved the question whether race discrimination may have occurred. (In another case (Pappas) she dissented to favor a white bigot.) She participated in two other panels rejecting district court rulings agreeing with race-based jury-selection claims. Given that record, it seems absurd to say that Judge Sotomayor allows race to infect her decisionmaking.
posted
my Token Conservative Friend (see? 'don't get me wrong, I have republican friends!' eh? eh?) said:
'this has not gone over well for conservatives and it is entirely their own doing. sotomayor could be described as a trap honeyed with the smell of scandal. you do not realize that it is all vapors until you are firmly stuck to the intended tar baby'
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quote: quote:Originally posted by Darth_Mauve: There is a tactic I've seen used often in Political fights, most often noted when coming from the right...Attack them on your weakness.
So here we have people like Liddy and Limbaugh who's humor is often racially based, claiming that she, not they, are the racists.
I say check the closets for those who are abusing this quote the most, and see if there are any sheets hanging in there.
Both right and left are guilty of hypocrisy. Both right and left will accuse the other of doing the same thing they were defending against a moment ago. A lot of it has to do with shifting power.
Christine, what I am saying is different than the standard hypocrisy found in politics. This standard hypocrisy is saying A or B not because you believe in A or B but because its best for you to say it at the moment.
I am referring to a specific tactic of projecting your weakness upon your opponent, hence tarring your opponent with a false weakness, and stopping him from exploiting your weakness.
Yes, this is a Politician's trick, not a Republican or Democrat trick.
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