Party of 9

Well, it figures that Sonia Sotomayor will be confirmed to the highest court in the land and since she revealed little of herself during her confirmation hearings, what exactly will she be bringing to the party? Let’s just let the judge speak for herself.

I believe jurisprudence, like cooking, requires many ingredients to make a satisfying meal. In Latina culture we love menudo, the delicious spicy sopa made from simple ingredients. Think of the Constitution as our base ingredient: a bland, tasteless broth of boiled white tripe. Doesn't sound so tempting, does it? Now here's where the fun comes in: all of the cooks gather in the cocina and bring their own special secret ingredients to the mix. Souter salts the pot and Roberts adds Wonder Bread and mayonnaise; Breyer the lox and cream cheese. Thomas drops in fried chicken, and Alito and Scalia spaghetti. Now here comes Kennedy with corned beef and potatoes. Stevens adds the Metamucil. Now we're cooking! Finally, I stir in my special picante blend of Latina legal spices. What started as a boring simple broth is now a delicious crazy justice stew -- that tastes different every time!

Read more here

Line of the Day

It was a disgrace that W. appointed two white men to a court stocked with white men.

Our desire to see these hearings expose liberal orthodoxy as hopelessly wed to identity politics needs no help from Sonia Sotomayor.

If MoDo is really that concerned with “balancing” the court, we’re confident that instead of merely another white male, she would be down with a good ol’-fashioned WASP. With RBG on the way out and Sotomayor on the way in, that leaves the high court packed with no fewer than 6 Roman Catholics. How’s that for some diversity?

We hesitated actually linking to the column titled “White Man’s Last Stand” as it was 2 minutes of our life we’ll never get back but did so out of professional obligation and the fact that it’s your life and we are in no position to tell you how best to waste it.

Clarification

We hope we weren’t being too obtuse or coy in our post last week that was meant to juxtapose what is required of a juror vs. some relevant quotes from prospective and former justices on the Supreme Court. So, just to clear up any confusion, Andrew McCarthy wonders, here, if Judge Sotomayor would see the light of the jury box if she dropped the “Latina woman” hammer on a judge or an inquiring lawyer during the jury selection questioning?

At the end of the day, though, we’re probably going with Krauthammer's advise: Criticize, then confirm.

Let’s let Ms. Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy be exposed to the light (like, how much is she and by extension the Democratic party beholden to identity politics) and confirm her as her ascension to the high court does not necessarily alter the balance of the court and because the numbers in the Senate are not there and, hopefully some degree of deference to the Presidents' choices can be returned to a process that has been nuked by Senate Democrats. Or, as can be summed up in this says-it-all headline from Jack Tapper:

“First President in US History to Have Voted to Filibuster a Supreme Court Nominee Now Hopes for Clean Process”

We'll jump right on that, sir.

Sometimes, it's just a matter of perspective

In his column, here, Ruben Navarette praises the President for choosing Sonia Sotomayor because of her top-flight academic credentials, her intellect and, yes, her empathy.

In a column he penned a couple of weeks back, Navarette was critical of a jury’s decision of finding the white defendants who had beaten to death a Mexican illegal in Shenandoah, PA. guilty of merely simple assault when the more serious charges of ethnic intimidation and third-degree murder were thrown out.

The jury foreman contended that he thought that some of the people on the jury were indeed racist but another juror took exception to that:

"It was really not as cut and dry as a couple of white kids beat up a Mexican and killed him," Silfies told reporters. "It's not like that. I sat there for a week and heard the testimony and heard the evidence, and I had a lot of doubt that these boys were heinous."

In fact, here’s what Navarette wrote in a follow up to that quote:

A lot of what happens in the court system is all about empathy. The jury might have found it easier to relate to the teenagers sitting at the defendants' table than to an illegal immigrant from Mexico lying in the morgue.

Thank you, Mr. Navarette. In the span of two columns over two weeks, he has illustrated perfectly the sticky mess one can get into when one starts putting a premium on “empathy” as a qualifier in the courtroom. Sure, everything is dandy when “empathy” results in “favorable” outcomes but what happens when “empathy” swerves off the course for which you had intended? What happens when your concept of "empathy" does not necessarily reflect that of someone else? And what happens when “empathy” overrides objectivity? Objectivity, a concept and practice in the courtroom that I’m sure Mr. Navarette would now liked to have seen a little bit more of in the Shenandoah case.

Empathy giveth, Empathy taketh away.

You just can't please everybody

She’s the pick of a highly popular president whose Party is in firm control of the Senate and though she is viewed with skepticism by many on the right, do you know what has some people really freaked out about Sonia Sotomayor? That she may not be sufficiently radical enough when it comes to abortion rights.

Read more here.

P.S. We want to impart some comforting words to the abortion rights crowd. Sotomayor was picked by a man who represents the platinum standard for absolutely unfettered abortion rights. We don't think there's a whole lot to be worried about.

Of course, your opinion may differ

We had jury duty today and though we were de-selected once we made it to the box, we always find the instructions offered by the presiding judge and the line of questioning employed by both the prosecution and defense in order to select the jury to be informative.

Without getting into too much of the details, the case that was to be tried was the allegation that a woman with a history of mental problems (assumed) had committed fraud in illegally obtaining Social Security money.

We have appeared for jury duty probably half a dozen times and though we haven’t yet served in the jury box, the judges opening instructions, though pro forma, are entirely necessary. And this time the judge was no different as he asked us to be impartial jurors and to not let the gender, race, religion or sexual orientation of the defendant, the witnesses or that of the prosecution or defense bias our thinking either in favor or against.

“Is there anyone here, that will not be able to do this? I see no hands raised.”

The attorneys also asked individual jurors (those who had previous experiences with trying to obtain disability or social security, for example) if they could indeed remain impartial throughout the trial if they themselves had a negative experience in attempting to obtain the same.

The judge then introduced a term we had not heard before. It was jury nullification. It goes hand in hand with the requested impartiality but we suppose because of this case where (again, we are assuming) the defendant suffers from some mental health issues, the judge wanted to make sure that our emotions did not get the better of us. The judge illustrated the concept of jury nullification as being where a juror or jurors, regardless of the facts presented before them would move to acquit a defendant in protest of the applicable law(s) or the set of circumstances inherent to the case.

We’re proud we have the justice system as we do. We’re glad the judge takes what seems like an eternity to lay out the simple ground rules for executing a fair trial and that any biases and prejudices are weeded out as best as possible for as fair a trial as possible. And we are glad the lawyers for both the prosecution and defense assist in this effort.

It appears to by a system that is steeped in trying to obtain the highest of standards by demanding the best in mankind’s nature. These high standards which are un-swayed by emotion or prejudice but rather informed by the rule of law. And we think we can all agree that this is the best way to do this.
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“You do what you think is right and let the law catch up”.
- Thurgood Marshall

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