The Real Record, the Real Judge

Enough with the fake alarm, folks.

The New York Times, with the grateful permission of the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, has republished the now-infamous “Latina judging” speech given by Judge Sonia Sotomayor in 2001.  Everyone should read it, because — far from making me fear that Obama has nominated a “racist,” as others have conveniently and simplistically called her — it makes me thrilled with the prospect that such a person could soon be ascending to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court.

Just a flavor:

America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension. We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore these very differences that in other contexts we laud.

As with the issues America faced when choosing whether to vote to make a black man President of the United States, the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor will force America and, more importantly, the U.S. Senate to face questions of whether they want, or will vote, to have, for the first time, the perspective of a person who is both non-white and non-male on our highest court.  Moreover, the question is whether we want such a person, when she is freely and openly willing to admit and head-on address the differences in perspective that brings — as opposed to others who pretend, a la Stephen Colbert, not to see any such differences.

Later in the speech, Sotomayor said:

Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.

This, I posit, is one of the best explications of the “empathy” sought by Obama that has been so incoherently derided by his conservative opposition.  It is not, as they suggest, a preference based on familiarity with those “like” but instead an admission of the limits of each of our own experiences and a willingness to look outside that to understand those “unlike” us.

After reading this speech in its entirety, it’s all the more easy to understand why President Obama was, apparently, so blown away by Judge Sotomayor when meeting with her and why he nominated her to the Supreme Court on Tuesday.  It also is all the more apparent that, while Sotomayor is willing — eager even — to engage in a real dialogue about the impact of diverse viewpoints in judging, others’ simplistic denunciations do not deserve the attention or credence they are being given.

[UPDATE: One conservative did read the full speech -- and concludes he was "wrong about Sotomayor speech."

Michael Medved, however, misstated another part of her speech on MSNBC's The Ed Show, saying that she had said there "are physiological differences" between people of different genders or races.  She did not say that at all.  She actually said:

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.

Big difference, and Ed Schultz let him get away with it.]

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