On Sotomayor and the demographics of the Supreme Court

With the start of the Senate hearings on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, it was inevitable that there would be numerous articles written both in favor of and against the nominee. One of the articles that caught my attention came out today on CNN by Laura Gomez. “What the ‘wise Latina’ remark meant” covers some of the biggest issues I have with the nomination process. In her article, Gomez defends Sotomayor by breaking down her controversial statement:
 

First, the sentence I have quoted here followed Sotomayor’s acknowledgement that there is no universal definition of “wise.”

Second, she presented the statement as aspirational by using the phrase “I would hope”; she was talking as much about the ideal of diversity as its reality.

Third, she specified that she was talking not about all Latinas and all white men but about ideal types; she invoked a “wise” Hispanic woman who has had a particular set of life experiences and white male judges who have not “lived that life” (suggesting that some white males could, in fact, bring a similar empathy and/or life experience to the bench).

Fourth, she went out of her way to say that she thought this would be the case “more often than not,” rather than all the time.

Finally, in the next sentence of her speech, Sotomayor went on to specify that she was addressing the dynamics of an appellate court with multiple judges (such as the three-judge and en banc panels on which she sits as an appeals court judge and the Supreme Court), rather than talking about a trial court context in which a single judge presides.

What Sotomayor “meant” is what she said. She said “better” (the one aspect of the sentence Gomez did not address), meaning that a White Man would “more often than not” make poorer conclusions compared to a Latino Woman. Unfortunately, the law shouldn’t be gender or race influenced, especially in the highest court. There is no room for prejudice or empathy when determining if something is Constitutional. Rarely are the cases facing the Court clear cut, though on some aspect the Judges can find the issue to be right or wrong. You can’t get “better” than that.

Would it be nice if our Court matches perfectly with the demographic makeup of our nation? Of course. But that has nothing to do with the selection process. The current demographics of the U.S. include:

To balance out the Suprme Courts demographics with that of the naiton, you would need: 6 Whites, 2 Hispanics, 1 Black (0 Asians), 2 Catholics, 5 Christians, 0 Jews (2 Justices would be “other”), 5 Females, and 4 Males.

The role of the President is to pick the most perfect person for the job. If that means the court is all white or all black, all male or all female, all old or all young, then that is fine. None of those items impact the Constitutionality of actions and rulings by lower courts. This isn’t the place for some sort of forced racial or gender social mapping. The rulings these Judges make impact everyone in our Country. If we ware bypassing the best persons for the job simply to make the “nation’s highest court looked more like the nation,” we are doing ourselves a major, major disservice.

Related articles:
U.S. Census Bureau – http://www.census.gov/prod/2005pubs/censr-20.pdf

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