Observations from Taranto:
Roberts’s statement was trivially true, which means that Sotomayor’s defies logic. Her argument amounts to an assertion that a ban on racial discrimination is a form of racial discrimination–that everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others. Also Orwellian is her claim that she wants “to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race.” Such an assertion is almost always disingenuous. After all, the way to speak openly and candidly is to speak openly and candidly. Declaring one’s intention to do so is at best superfluous throat clearing.
And while Sotomayor may be open, she isn’t candid. She presents a potted history of race in America in which there is a straight line from Jim Crow segregation through literacy tests to the Michigan amendment, which “involves this last chapter of discrimination”–even though it bans discrimination, and even though Sotomayor acknowledges that its substance is perfectly constitutional.
One can understand how a mediocrity like Sotomayor likes racial and gender discrimination, since she’s benefited so much from it herself.
They could recognize mediocrity in Harriet Miers. Sotomayer had other things equally worth dismissing her nomination for. Another example of America lost.
I strongly supported Harriet Myers, as did another blogger called Beldar who was practicing lawyer.
The point was that the Supreme Court doesn’t even remotely represent the population of lawyers, nor their fields. It would be nice if someone on the court had at least passing experience in corporate law, real estate law, contract law, divorce law, criminal law, or any subject other than the narrowly defined field of Constitutional law, a subject in which the court specializes yet seems supremely incompetent, possibly because the selection pool is so insular that it can’t imagine that the Constitution is even read anywhere outside of DC, and is certain that it’s not read anywhere inside DC.
So as for qualifications, over half of Supreme court justices didn’t have a law degree. One chief justice never even went to college. This doesn’t imply that they were stupid, it points out that in the past becoming a lawyer was kind of like becoming a diesel mechanic. If you were really smart and read Blackstone, you could hang out a shingle and try your hand at lawyering, since diesel engines hadn’t been invented yet.
Eventually Harvard and some other universities offered a few courses to help prepare students for the bar exam, which you just sat in on like MCAT prep courses, or perhaps talks on small appliance repair. But lawyers’ offspring tend to be lawyers, and lawyers often end up making laws and exercising power (and get rich), so the universities realized that they could milk the parents of students sitting in on law lectures for major bucks, especially if they’d turn the lectures into a bona fide university degree. So they went with that model for many decades, and then realized that if they expanded the course to two years, they’d be able to charge twice as much money for the same product, and even up their prices because it was a premium offering. Marketing genius. Harvard as since started offering a three year degree — in a subject that one justice of the Supreme Court mastered at the age of 17 because he was sick of schooling.
What amused me about the Harriet Myers flap was that she was roundly attacked for not being an expert in Constitutional Law, which is to this day one of the shortest subjects you can take (6 credit hours! – but only recently with an expansion from the previously standard 3 credit hour course), because the Constitution is a very short document that gets right to the point. There’s only so much money you can milk out of explaining it and subsequent case law and decisions about it.
Without some way to increase the diversity on the court (not the fictional liberal version of diversity based on gender and skin color, but real diversity based on background, specialty, experience, and focus), a 8-1 decision might as well be “8 of 9 dentists agree! Your teeth will look cleaner if you use Crest Ultra Whitening!”
You can only rule against common sense for so long before the common sense is that you are an idiot, a shill, a plant, or the problem.
Former Justice O’Connor once opined that there are no sitting Justices with any experience with Water Rights and that the Court is entirely composed of graduates of either Harvard or Yale Law.
According to the fount of all wisdom (Wikipedia), Justice Breyer is the only one to have lived or attended college west of the Mississippi.
The gene pool is shallow, indeed…
Sorry, George, but Myers was worthless as a nominee. Feel free to tout her; I understand many folks still think Ralph Nader was a great politician.
Re: American lost. Yeah, I’ve been getting the same feeling. It’s as if we’re living the movie “Wild in the Steets” where the government is taken over by 15 year olds. Except in this case, he 15 year olds are living in 50 year old bodies.
Ken, I have a sneaking suspicion that Sotomayor’s reminisces are based on her own life. In other words, she’s getting back at all the people who (she thought) said “hurtful” things about her.
Damn. Thirty more years of this [deleted]. I may have to start breaking into the VodkaPundit’s stock to deal with her.
Sotomayor is not only subliterate but also a Maoist crank. Objectively speaking, she is not qualified to be a legal secretary. Every job she’s ever had at any level higher than Hooters waitress has been stolen from a more qualified candidate and given to her to fill a racial quota.
The sad part is, it’s easy to imagine McCain or Romney nominating her or someone even more noxious, like the equally unqualified Hillary Clinton, to the Supreme Court, because they “reach across the aisle.”
It’s easy to imagine things. Whether your imagination has anything to do with the real world is another question.
Sotomayor is the quintessential affirmative action appointee. She got to every level she climbed to the SCOTUS via affirmative action, knows it, and demands it continue forever. Cheers –
Discrimination in the name of non-discrimination reminds me of the saying from the Vietnam war: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
When it comes to thought, the opposite of diversity is university.