Word: sotomayor
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...Sotomayor does not appear to be a crusader for radical change. She has always sought change from within the system rather than fundamentally challenging its premises. As a student at Princeton, she co-chaired a Puerto Rican student organization and filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission about Princeton's affirmative-action failures, leading to the hiring of the first Hispanic dean of students. But she acted in such a constructive way that William Bowen, then university president, helped select her for the Pyne Prize, the highest honor Princeton bestows on undergraduates. Sotomayor's experiences as an outsider...
...Moderate on the Bench Although Sotomayor's speeches raise legitimate questions about her views on essential race and gender differences, the best evidence that she is no radical multiculturalist in the courtroom is found in her judicial opinions. Here she appears to be an incrementalist rather than a radical of any stripe. In a survey of Sotomayor's 226 majority opinions, Stefanie Lindquist, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, found that only 38% could clearly be characterized as liberal, while 49% could clearly be considered conservative. When the criminal cases (in which appellate judges are encouraged...
...Sotomayor, in her speech, takes a very different view from Ginsburg's and O'Connor's. She sympathizes with "difference feminists" and then says she is not sure she agrees with O'Connor's reputed statement that "a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion in deciding cases." Sotomayor concludes, "I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experience, would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion" - and then defines "better" as a "more compassionate, and caring conclusion." She also recommends a 1993 article in Judicature, a legal journal, that...
...When Sotomayor gave her speech in 2001 at California's Berkeley School of Law, "A Latina Judge's Voice," she added "people of color" to the earlier passages that focused on gender. "I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice to the law and society," she wrote in a 2002 article based on the talk. And yet it is hard to portray her speeches as those of someone committed to the view that all women and minority judges have essentially different perspectives than white male judges. "No one person, judge...
...civil rights cases - including race, gender and immigration appeals - Sotomayor tilts more to the left; Lindquist characterized her majority opinions as 54% liberal and 46% conservative. But when you break out the seven majority opinions involving race, only three rule in favor of the discrimination plaintiffs. It's in the immigration and gender cases that Sotomayor shows clearer signs of liberal leanings: out of 28 majority opinions in immigration cases, Sotomayor decided in favor of the immigrant in 17, or 61%. And in four gender cases, involving sex discrimination and sexual harassment, she decided in favor of the plaintiff...