DISTURBING IDEAS FROM A POTENTIAL JUSTICE - AT 7:18 A.M. ET:  President Obama will soon announce his choice for the open Supreme Court seat.  Stuart Taylor, one of the best legal journalists around, has gone deeply into the background of one leading candidate, and is disturbed by what he sees.  This is a classic example of good investigative journalism:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." -- Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001

The above assertion and the rest of a remarkable speech to a Hispanic group by Sotomayor -- widely touted as a possible Obama nominee to the Supreme Court -- has drawn very little attention in the mainstream media since it was quoted deep inside The New York Times on May 15.

It deserves more scrutiny, because apart from Sotomayor's Supreme Court prospects, her thinking is representative of the Democratic Party's powerful identity-politics wing.

COMMENT:  I would hope that Sotomayor's quote would pretty much disqualify her, but it won't.  If I were Hispanic, I'd find the quote very demeaning, very insulting.  It suggests that a Hispanic-American judge will decide a case differently because of her background, but that is not what the judiciary is about.  We just appointed a Hispanic-American general to one of the highest posts in Afghanistan.  Did anyone say of him that he thinks like a Hispanic general?  Luis Alvarez, a Nobel laureate, was one of the greatest physicists this nation ever produced.  Did anyone suggest that he thought like a Hispanic scientist? 

We should always remember the American motto, "Out of many, one."  Celebrating one's culture is wonderful.  Suggesting that it makes one a better or worse public servant degrades that culture.

May 22, 2009