It’s been two days since Dennis’s post on SCOTUS Judge nominee Sotomayor, and today’s Washington Post featured its weekly editorial by Charles Krauthammer, who unveiled his advice for the conservative reaction to the nominee. Krauthammer says: (I will include lots of quotes because an account is required to read the article at the website)
What should a principled conservative do? Use the upcoming hearings not to deny her the seat, but to illuminate her views. No magazine gossip from anonymous court clerks. No "temperament" insinuations. Nothing ad hominem. The argument should be elevated, respectful and entirely about judicial philosophy.
Krauthammer’s article focuses on one of Sotomayor’s past rulings, that upheld the decision made by the New Haven Fire Department to dismiss 20 men’s promotions based on the grounds that none of the black applicants passed a required test to achieve those promotions. Krauthammer goes on to talk about the problems surrounding Sotomayor’s tendency to be empathetic in rulings, and her obvious ‘identity politics,’ an issue I slightly brushed upon in the comments section of Dennis’s last post.
…and on her statements about the inherent differences between groups, and the superior wisdom she believes her Latina physiology, culture and background grant her over a white male judge. They perfectly reflect the Democrats’ enthrallment with identity politics, which assigns free citizens to ethnic and racial groups possessing a hierarchy of wisdom and entitled to a hierarchy of claims upon society.
Sotomayor shares President Obama’s vision of empathy as lying at the heart of judicial decision-making — sympathetic concern for litigants’ background and current circumstances, and for how any judicial decision would affect their lives.
. . .
But all that stops at the courthouse door. Figuratively and literally, justice wears a blindfold. It cannot be a respecter of persons. Everyone must stand equally before the law, black or white, rich or poor, advantaged or not.
His basic conclusion is the same assumed by Dennis in the Insider’s last post: that, as George Costanza might say, ‘barring some unforeseen incident,’ Sotomayor will indeed be confirmed. One of Krauthammer’s other resounding points in the article takes this a step further, saying that she should be confirmed, only because it is an American’s responsibility to give deference to a President’s nominee, saying that “elections have consequences.”
Vote Democratic and you get mainstream liberalism: a judicially mandated racial spoils system and a jurisprudence of empathy that hinges on which litigant is less "advantaged."
