Word: sotomayor
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...doubt that President Obama has changed American politics, consider that we are about to have the first Supreme Court confirmation hearing in almost a quarter-century that does not revolve, in one way or another, around Roe v. Wade. The appeals-court judge Sonia Sotomayor has ruled on just three cases that dealt, indirectly, with abortion. She has written a lot about racial preferences, though. That is one reason the country is set to have a knock-down, drag-out fight over affirmative action instead...
...made possible by these documents," he said during his national-security speech at the National Archives in May. As if there were any American for whom that is not true. Or as if ethnic minorities can make that claim more plausibly than other Americans. (See pictures of Judge Sonia Sotomayor...
Obama referred to Sotomayor's "qualities" and "qualifications," but he was a lot more interested in the former than the latter. She grew up in the South Bronx, got diabetes at 8, lost her father at 9 and fought her way to Princeton and the federal bench thanks to a strong-willed mother who procured the "only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood." She has "a common touch and a sense of compassion, an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live." Obama has spoken of wanting judges with "empathy...
...would need a heart of stone not to be inspired by Sotomayor's story. But does her superior knowledge of "ordinary" people arise from being Hispanic? Sotomayor thinks so, if we believe the snippet from a 2001 speech at the University of California, Berkeley, law school that rippled across the Internet this week. She believes judges cannot help being affected by gender and ethnic identity. "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences," she said, "would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life...
There is a bright line, though. And I would guess that Sotomayor crossed it when she agreed in 2008 to toss the results of a promotion exam for the New Haven, Conn., fire department because an insufficient number of minorities passed it. That seems inherently unfair to those who succeeded - including the dyslexic firefighter Frank Ricci, who hired tutors to help him pass and whose name adorns the case. The lack of minority success does not necessarily signify the presence of racial prejudice. The best way to rectify such a situation is to make sure the next test is truer...