Sotomayor And The Role Of Personal Experience

Alan Stewart Carl, a moderate blogger, writes about Judge Sonia Sotomayor's controversial speech about race, gender, life experience, and law: "The worry is that Sotomayor doesn’t believe in immutable law but believes the Constitution and precedent should be elastic, allowing personal experience to take a place beside legal judgment in determining how our laws should be applied. There’s some reason to think that’s exactly the kind of judge Obama wants."

He continues, focusing on President Obama's speech yesterday about the nomination: "Is he saying overcoming hardship is more important (or even just as important) as a rigorous intellect? As a consistent, reasonable judicial philosophy? Can you imagine what those on the left would have said if President Bush had made Samuel Alito’s religion an explicit selling point of his nomination? Obviously, all judges are influenced by their cultural beliefs and personal experiences, but to believe there’s something innately superior in a specific blend of hardship and ethnicity seems misguided, if not downright arrogant. However, all I’ve got to work with in this post is one quote from one Sotomayor speech and a typically Obamaian celebration of diversity. Two pieces to a much larger puzzle. The job of the Senate, if they so choose to perform their job, is to determine the extent to which Sotomayor believes she can manipulate the law so it conforms to her personal understandings of right and wrong. If she’s smart, she’ll take a page from Antonin Scalia who denies his Catholicism affects his judgments, despite all evidence to the contrary. Then again, maybe Sotomayor will do less of the usual obfuscating and actually defend her experience as being a vital part of her ability to make good judicial rulings. That would make for some very interesting confirmation hearings."