Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Sotomayor: Where Policy is Made

In 2005, during a speech at Duke University, Sonia Sotomayor revealed a lot about her judicial philosophy.

She declared that the courts are the place "where POLICY is made."

It doesn't matter to me that Sotomayor is Hispanic or a woman. What matters to me is that she is an unabashed judicial activist.

She's also not shy about
bashing white males.

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” said Judge Sotomayor.

I assume that she thinks of herself as that "wise Latina woman."

From the
New York Post:
Sotomayor, who is currently a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals, was giving a speech at Duke University when the footage -- which surfaced on Monday night on the Fox News Channel -- was shot.

"And I know this is on tape and I should never say that, because we don't make law," Sotomayor added. "I know."

As the audience laughed, Sotomayor, quipped, "I am not promoting it, and I'm not advocating it."


10 comments:

Cyd said...

I'd like to say that I am shocked, though in reality, I am not.

Why would we expect The Obama to appoint anyone who was not a Constitution and white male hater anyway? Only makes sense...

Anonymous said...

Obama, yet again, lied through his teeth when he read his speech from a teleprompter making his nomination and introducing the nominee. He made her out to be everything that she is not.

Jill said...

I'm so NOT shocked; his liberal agenda rolls along....

Dave said...

Getting angry about this type of prejudice is so "typically white" of me.

Mary said...

If John Roberts or Samuel Alito had said, "I would hope that a wise white man with the richness of his experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina female who hasn’t lived that life," they would have had no chance of being confirmed.

Zero.

Anonymous said...

sickening, wasn't it?

JohnC said...

Any first-year law student knows there is nothing controversial about what Sotomayor said. If courts existed merely to tell parties to follow the law, there would be little purpose for appeals courts.

In fact, courts make policy all the time. Common law, which we inherited from England, is essentially judge-made law. Statutory law is frequently unclear or riddled with unforseen gaps that courts need to interpret/fill in. In doing so, as a matter of function and practice, they make policy. There is simply no disputing that.

Mary said...

Yes, any 1L who has swallowed his or her professors' crap.

It's true that courts make policy all the time.

At issue is the role of the courts as set out in the Constitution of the United States.

There's the rub.

Anonymous said...

Well Sotomayor's comments are accurate about the courts and the role of the courts, and John is right all Law Students know this.

This is how it works, a law is made and it has specific elements within that law that are outlawed, the majority of the time the elements may or may not be met, how do we decide that? policy, its a policy argument that this is what we should do so the actions of X meet element Y and the Actions of A do not meet element B. Thats called policy. Any law student, conservative or liberal knows thats the way it works and the intent of the founders who said that Congress had authority to establish the federal circuits. Read the entire constitution before you make a moron out of yourself...nope to late.

Mary said...

"Read the entire constitution before you make a moron out of yourself...nope to late."

I rest my case.