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The 'Empathy' Nominee (Sotomayor)
Wall Street Journal ^ | May 27, 2009

Posted on 05/27/2009 2:35:38 AM PDT by reaganaut1

In making Sonia Sotomayor his first nominee for the Supreme Court yesterday, President Obama appears to have found the ideal match for his view that personal experience and cultural identity are the better part of judicial wisdom.

This isn't a jurisprudence that the Founders would recognize, but it is the creative view that has dominated the law schools since the 1970s and from which both the President and Judge Sotomayor emerged. In the President's now-famous word, judging should be shaped by "empathy" as much or more than by reason. In this sense, Judge Sotomayor would be a thoroughly modern Justice, one for whom the law is a voyage of personal identity.

"Experience being tested by obstacles and barriers, by hardship and misfortune; experience insisting, persisting, and ultimately overcoming those barriers," Mr. Obama said yesterday in introducing Ms. Sotomayor. "It is experience that can give a person a common touch of compassion; an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live. And that is why it is a necessary ingredient in the kind of Justice we need on the Supreme Court."

In a speech published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2002, Judge Sotomayor offered her own interpretation of this jurisprudence. "Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases," she declared. "I am . . . not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, . . . there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, 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."

(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: bhojudicialnominees; bhoscotus; empathy; obamajudges; sotomayor; supremecourt
The Wall Street Journal opposes the identity politics that produces a Sotomayor nomination and supports limited government. It has also supported open borders for a long time, which results in heavy Hispanic immigration to the U.S., both legal and illegal, and which has helped create a Latino voting bloc and huge demand for social services in states such as California. Will they ever bother to note the connection, or is that "racist"?
1 posted on 05/27/2009 2:35:38 AM PDT by reaganaut1
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To: reaganaut1
personal experience and cultural identity are the better part of judicial wisdom.

Serbian jurisprudence.

2 posted on 05/27/2009 2:41:44 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: reaganaut1
Will they ever bother to note the connection, or is that "racist"?

It would seem to be a contradiction, but they would heal that by simply saying that the best citizens are those that work cheapest. That is the real policy.

Ergo, if, say, 450,000,000 Chinese volunteered to move here and work for 75 cents an hour, the WSJ, doing the bidding of money, would turn editorial handsprings celebrating the happy accession.

And never mind that all their subsequent editions would be Mandarin-only, and that their children and grandchildren would be shut out of employment, society, politics, and the education system, and systematically reduced to servitude in the house their fathers built.

3 posted on 05/27/2009 2:48:12 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus
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To: reaganaut1
Berkeley La RazaThe Race Law Journal

No problem here, move along....

4 posted on 05/27/2009 4:01:09 AM PDT by PogySailor (We're so screwed.....welcome to the American Oligarchy)
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To: reaganaut1
The Obombi administration....another day, another disaster.
5 posted on 05/27/2009 4:07:41 AM PDT by RU88
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To: RU88

Day by day and every way we are getting closer and closer to a rebellion...I can feel it.


6 posted on 05/27/2009 5:12:30 AM PDT by Mouton
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