During his January 2006 Senate confirmation, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito made the following remarks:
Because when a case comes before me involving, let’s say, someone who is an immigrant — and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases — I can’t help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn’t that long ago when they were in that position.
[…]
When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account.
I may be wrong, but I don’t remember that these remarks by Judge Alito, on how his own and his family’s background, ethnicity and life experiences would enter into his thinking process or would be taken “into account,” caused a furor at the time.
Now, let’s step back a few more years, to 2001 when Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in a speech at the University of California at Berkeley, also suggested that her background, life experience and heritage help guide her decision-making:
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.
Again, I could be wrong, but I don’t remember Sotomayor’s words causing a firestorm at the time. And yet, by then she was already a Court of Appeals Judge.
Today, Judge Alito’s words do not raise any eyebrows.
Sotomayor’s words, on the contrary, have been the center of the vilest attacks on the Judge, on her character, on her gender and on her race.
It is interesting that the following words, part of the same 2001 speech by Sotomayor, are hardly mentioned:
“…judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law.”
Nationally-syndicated columnist, and 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner, Leonard Pitts Jr., who should know a thing or two about race and culture—having been the victim of racial attacks himself—had an interesting column yesterday, on how varied life experiences can only enhance the rulings of those on our nation’s highest Court
I intend no endorsement of Sotomayor. Let’s wait and see how she does before the Senate Judiciary Committee. I’m particularly interested in hearing how she explains her quoted remark that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience” will usually have better judgment than “a white man who hasn’t lived that life.” Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich have thundered with simulated indignation that the comment makes her a racist. It sounds more like attempted irreverence fallen flat, but she needs to address it.
Assuming she ascends to the court, Sotomayor will be the 113th person to do so. Of her 112 predecessors, 108 have been white men. Folks who profess concern about identity politics would do well to keep those numbers in mind, illustrating as they do that race and gender have never previously been absent from decisions about who sits on the court.
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Contrary to what some would argue, it is a net good when the panel whose decisions shape the nation “looks” something like the nation. Contrary to what they’d have us believe, legal judgment is not simply a matter of quoting precedent and applying logic. It is also a matter of “interpretation” and interpretation is shaped by who you are and what you’ve known.
If precedent and logic alone were definitive, the court could not have decided, for instance, to endorse segregation in 1896 in clear violation of the 14th Amendment. But because of who they were and what they had known, that panel of white men somehow interpreted the amendment as allowing Jim Crow — a tragic travesty that stood for 58 years.
Would the court have been well-served in 1896 had someone likely to be impacted by the ruling been there to offer a counterbalancing interpretation? If the court is debating an issue of importance to women, is not the quality of its deliberation improved if someone in the room is in possession of a uterus?
Yes, emphatically, to both.
Ensuring the presence of diverse people in the deliberation chamber betrays no American principles. Rather, it affirms a core American promise: Liberty and justice.
For all.
Well said, Mr. Pitts.
For the entire column by Leonard Pitts, please go here
The author is a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a writer.