Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Meet Empathy


"[A]s judges we are neither Jew, nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic. We owe equal attachment to the Constitution and are equally bound by our judicial obligations whether we derive our citizenship from the earliest or the latest immigrants to these shores. As a member of this Court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard."

—Justice Felix Frankfurter, dissenting in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624, 646 (1943).


I, XXX XXX, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as XXX under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.

- Federal judicial oath


“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,”

- Supreme Court justice nominee, Sonia Sotomayor

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Drexl Spivey: He must have thought it was white boy day. It ain't white boy day, is it?


Marty: No man, It ain't white boy day.

Anonymous said...

Driving across hour after hour of open desert today and listening to various news feeds, it was really funny listening to the automatic boiler plate replies coming from various neo-con old white guys right out of the gate at 10 a.m. local time, designed to be the quick-response to whoever the nominee might be -- and then several hours later getting a more revised, errrr, focused attack.

My favorite? "She doesn't have the intellectual capacity". Ooops. Somebody got word out to the neocon mill that angle wasn't going to play with an Ivy Phi Beta Kappa and law review editor (Princeton, I believe). That argument was dropped just about the time I hit Jean, NV.

- Mongo Was Wondering Just How to Spell Sotomayer for Much of the Mojave -- then Recalled a 1984 Olympic Classic: Cuban gold medal high jumper Sotomayer

Dean said...

Wow, what will an Ivy League education get you these days but a crappy football team and a bummer of an economy?

Considering our best and brightest from these hallowed institutions moved on to both Wall St. and Capitol Hill and proceeded to completely jack things up, were I talk radio guy, I would not necessarily stray from that line of skepticism.

But, I'm not, so I'll just let the words speak for themselves.

P.S. What's a neo-con?

K T Cat said...

While it's a lot of fun to feign apoplexy that an Obama appointee is a devotee of victim politics, it's hardly unexpected. The dude listened to Rev. Wright explain 20 years of increasingly obvious failure as the consequences of the White Man holding everybody down. Nominating Sotomayer for the Supreme Court is like watching the Detroit Lions promote one of their assistant coaches to head coach.

Anonymous said...

"What will an Ivy League education get you these days but a crappy football team and a bummer of an economy?"

Enough votes to win the 2009 presidential election.

- Mongo

Dean said...

I will hasten to add that had the Republicans swept back into power, you're statement, Mongo, would still stand.

Anonymous said...

McCain/Palin was All Ivy??

- Mongo Thought McCain Was Military Academy, and Palin Was Hawaii, North Butte Community, and... Idaho Was It??