It is time that President Bush nominated a woman. Women do have a different perspective because of their different gender experience. Many Republican women are watching closely. The party is not particularly known for its outreach to women and its recognition of "women's issues." In fact, in a lot of the dialogue I have read from conservatives here, the view of the proper role of women in society is frozen somewhere in the 1950s.
The principle of a fair jury is to be judged by ones peers. I know that SCOTUS decides the law and not fact, but the overwhelmingly lop sided gender makeup of the court calls into question whether women are truly considered equal with men in our society in their intelligence, disposition, knowledge and abilities.
Greater than 50% of the population is female. Why do we have only one female on the Court? It is obvious to me that when the rubber meets the road, women are still looked upon as inferior.
Aside from that, which I agree with. Having a true conservative woman would show that there ARE conservative women and would prevent liberals like Feinstein and Boxer from claiming to speak for all women. I also think if Roe and other abortion decisions are going to be handed down, it helps politically to have a woman in the majority to defend against claims that it's just a bunch of chauvinist male pigs that are treating women like second class citizens. I mean, if a woman wrote the opinion upholding notification or the partial birth abortion law, image wise would be much better than if a guy did it.
You're right, there's only one woman on the SC; I always suspected Ginsburg was my college freshman roommate in drag!!
If its an originalist/strict constructionist/conservative woman jurist, then I'm all for it. But he should avoid the type of mindset that says "this time it must be a woman, or a minority."
For one thing, that will not benefit the Republicans politically one bit. A female or Hispanic version of Scalia or Thomas would be demonized by the Left and the media to the point that they are no longer thought of a true 'woman' or 'Hispanic', but instead as the female or latino equivalent of an Uncle Tom.
For another, this type of thinking can lead to disasters like Sandra Day O'Connor. By promising to nominate the first woman to the Sup Court, Reagan basically backed himself into a corner in that he had to fulfill that promise with his first pick since he was not guaranteed any more. If he had held off of such nonsense, then perhaps a few yrs down the line the list of female candidates to choose from would have been longer and deeper, and then he may have actually chosen a good woman Sup Court justice instead of social liberal O'Connor.