Re: Sonia Sotomayor: Another Radical In Robes
- From: Robert of St Louis <free.tuneup@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 14:09:30 -0700 (PDT)
On May 26, 3:58 pm, Sordo <sordo @recdep.com> wrote:
Sonia Sotomayor: Another Radical In Robes
By Michael Edenhttp://startthinkingright.wordpress.com
In a nutshell: Sonia Sotomayor is an activist judge whose decisions have
nearly always been overturned by the very Court to which she aspires, as
well as a judge who has expressed racist views.
Let us begin with her racist views.
Have you ever seen the statue representing justice? Ever notice that
“Lady Justice” is wearing a blindfold?
She wears the blindfold so that she will NOT be biased by what her eyes
see. She will not notice the race, the gender, the religion, or any
other such factor. Instead, she will balance each case before her with
the scales of justice, as determined by the law.
We immediately discover that Judge Sonia Sotomayor has no resemblance
whatsoever to Lady Justice.
At a 2001 U.C. Berkeley symposium marking the 40th anniversary of
the first Latino named to the federal district court, Sotomayor said
that the gender and ethnicity of judges does and should affect their
judicial decision-making. From her speech:
“I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of
color we do a disservice both to the law and society….
“I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color
affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that – it’s
an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences
making different choices than others….
“Our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in
our judging. Justice 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. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as
Professor [Martha] Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal
definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with
the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better
conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” [U.C. Berkeley
School of Law, 10/26/2001]
Judge Sotomayor has ripped the blindfold off, and makes race and gender
major focal points of her view of “justice.” That she feels that a
Latina woman is able to reach a “better conclusion” than a white male is
simply racist.
Imagine for a single nanosecond that a white man said, “I would hope
that a wise white man with the richness of his experience would more
often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t
lived that life.” Imagine the OUTRAGE. Her statement is every bit as
racist; but it is radically leftist, and so it is ignored for any
purpose of criticism.
What about the scales of justice that Lady Justice uses to weigh cases?
Sonia Sotomayor lacks proper scales, as well.
First of all, let us see how she views the law:
In a 2005 panel discussion at Duke University, Sotomayor told
students that the federal Court of Appeals is where “policy is made.”
She and other panelists had been asked by a student to describe the
differences between clerking in the District Court versus in the Circuit
Court of Appeals. Sotomayor said that traditionally, those interested in
academia, policy, and public interest law tend to seek circuit court
clerkships. She said, “All of the legal defense funds out there, they’re
looking for people with Court of Appeals experience. Because it is —
Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, that
this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don’t ‘make
law,’ I know. [audience laughter] Okay, I know. I know. I’m not
promoting it, and I’m not advocating it. I’m, you know. [audience
laughter] Having said that, the Court of Appeals is where, before the
Supreme Court makes the final decision, the law is percolating. Its
interpretation, its application.” [Duke University School of Law,
2/25/2005, 43:19,http://realserver.law.duke.edu/ramgen/spring05/lawschool/02252005cler...]
Should judges legislate from the bench? Should they make policy?
Sotomayor clearly acknoweldges her view, even as she recognizes how
radical and wrong it is, and therefore says the pro forma things to
cover her arse.
She uses her position on the bench to impose her views upon the law, to
make policy rather than allow the legislative branch to make policy and
issue verdicts on the basis of the laws that are written.
Chief Justice John Roberts once put it this way:
“Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules. They apply
them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure
everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went
to a ballgame to see the umpire.”
Amazingly, this statement has been attacked by the left. That is
because they want a judge to be able to change the color or shape of the
baseballs, or change the size or length of the bats, or subjectively
alter the way the game is called. And they believe that a judge should
be able to call the game in a way that favors one chosen side over
another (using their “empathy” or their preference for a particular
race, for example). Because THEY are the side that features the
activists judges who will do those things to favor leftists causes and
arguments.
Justice Scalia, in his response to ACLU president Nadine Strossen’s
favoring judicial activism and finding opinions in foreign law that
corresponded with the verdicts they wanted to impose, said:
“Someday, Nadine, you’re going to get a very conservative Supreme
Court… And you’re going to regret what you’ve done.”
Because the left would howl in unholy outrage if rightwing justices
abandoned the Constitution the way the left have and imposed their own
views and sought their own sources to justify their subjective rulings.
Justice Roberts made another relevant and powerful statement:
“I had someone ask me in this process — I don’t remember who it was,
but somebody asked me, you know, ‘Are you going to be on the side of the
little guy?’ And you obviously want to give an immediate answer, but as
you reflect on it, if the Constitution says that the little guy should
win, the little guy is going to win in court before me. But if the
Constitution says that the big guy should win, well, then, the big guy
is going to win, because my obligation is to the Constitution. That’s
the oath.”
But this ISN’T the oath that Sonia Sotomayor will hold herself to.
Rather, she will pull off the blindfold, and judge cases by race and by
gender. And she will “make policy” rather than follow the law.
What did Thomas Jefferson say about the threat of Supreme Court Justices
imposing their own will upon the Constitution and imposing laws on the
nation based on nothing but their own wills?
“This member of the Government was at first considered as the most
harmless and helpless of all its organs. But it has proved that the
power of declaring what the law is, ad libitum, by sapping and mining
slyly and without alarm the foundations of the Constitution, can do what
open force would not dare to attempt.” —Thomas Jefferson to Edward
Livingston, 1825. ME 16:114“The Constitution . . . meant that its
coordinate branches should be checks on each other. But the opinion
which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are
constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere
of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres,
would make the Judiciary a despotic branch.” —Thomas Jefferson to
Abigail Adams, 1804. ME 11:51
“To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all
constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one
which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are
as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same
passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their
maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem [good justice is broad
jurisdiction], and their power the more dangerous as they are in office
for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the
elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal,
knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time
and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all
the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.” —Thomas
Jefferson to William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:277
I don’t hear Jefferson praising “empathy” as the defining quality of of
our Supreme Court Justices. I don’t hear him lamenting that a Latina
woman isn’t on the bench due to her superior wisdom over his own (as a
white man). I don’t hear him praising Sotomayor’s desire to “make
policy” from the bench. In fact, what I hear Jefferson doing is rolling
in his grave over the abomination that Barack Obama’s and Sonia
Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy is inflicting upon the nation.
Finally, Sotomayor doesn’t make good law. Too many times, her activist
decisions have been overturned. Of the cases in which she ruled that
went before the US Supreme Court, Sotomayor has been reversed fully five
out of six times. And the one time she WASN’T reversed, her reasoning
was unanimously faulted by every single justice:
Cases Reviewed by the Supreme Court
• Ricci v. DeStefano 530 F.3d 87 (2008) — decision pending as of
5/26/2009
• Riverkeeper, Inc. vs. EPA, 475 F.3d 83 (2007) — reversed 6-3
(Dissenting: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg)
• Knight vs. Commissioner, 467 F.3d 149 (2006) — upheld, but
reasoning was unanimously faulted
• Dabit vs. Merrill Lynch, 395 F.3d 25 (2005) — reversed 8-0
• Empire Healthchoice Assurance, Inc. vs. McVeigh, 396 F.3d 136
(2005) — reversed 5-4 (Dissenting: Breyer, Kennedy, Souter, Alito)
• Malesko v. Correctional Services Corp., 299 F.3d 374 (2000) —
reversed 5-4 (Dissenting: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer)
• Tasini vs. New York Times, et al, 972 F. Supp. 804 (1997) —
reversed 7-2 (Dissenting: Stevens, Breyer)
Sonia Sotomayor is a judge who has been humiliated with an 8-0 smackdown
of her judicial reasoning.
And the case that is “pending review” – Ricci v. DeStefano (aka the New
Haven firefighter case), is precisely the sort of terrible and racist
reasoning that should demonstrate how unfit for the highest court in the
land Sonia Sotomayor truly is.
A couple of paragraphs from an excellent article on the case:
Mr. Ricci’s saga started in 2003. At the time, he was one of more
than 100 firemen who took a written and oral exam that the New Haven
Fire Department (NHFD) administered in order to determine whom it would
promote to fill 15 openings for lieutenant and captain positions. In
preparation for the test, Ricci, a dyslexic who struggles with reading
and retaining information, simply outworked most of his competition. He
spent more than $1,000 to purchase books that the city had recommended
as useful study guides, and he studied for 8 to 13 hours each day. When
the test scores were ultimately tabulated, Ricci’s name was near the top
of the list. The promotion should have been his.
It didn’t happen that way. It soon emerged that New Haven’s black
firefighters, on average, had performed quite poorly on the same test
that Ricci had aced. In fact, not a single African American had scored
high enough to qualify for a promotion. When word of this got around, a
number of local black leaders with political influence thundered that
the exam itself was to blame, arguing alternately that it was racially
biased on the one hand, and a poor predictor of an applicant’s potential
to fulfill the duties of a leadership position on the other.
This is exactly the sort of thing that Roberts was talking about in his
analogy. We had a law in place; we had a universally recognized system
of promotion. One man, in particular, tried to work as hard as he could
within the rules that were supposed to be for everyone, and aced the
exam. But Sonia Sotomayor decided she didn’t like the results, and so
she changed the rules quite literally after the game had already been
played.
Let’s demand a justice who rules according to the law without prejudice
rather than a justice who makes prejudice a basis for her rulings.
Let’s demand a justice who understands that she is under the rule of law
rather than a justice who uses the legal system to “make policy.”
We don’t need another radical in robes.
The American people have enough black-robed masters and government
bureaucrats imposing their will upon us in blatant disregard of the
intent of the Constitution which is supposed to be our source of law.
We have enough officials who conflate their own power and explode the
size and role of government as master over every sphere of our lives.
We can do far better than Sonia Sotomayor.
Yeah we need more Judges in white robes like they have in the red
states.
.
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