In her opening statement Sonia Sotomayor addressed conservatives concerns by stating that she will uphold the impartiality of our justice system. But this, of course, means very little. It is much like a conservative judge talking around the Roe vs. Wade issue to appease liberals just so they can get on the court. What we have to look at is her past statements and her past decisions and these do not show a judge who is impartial. They show a judge that makes decisions based upon racial empathy. Her ‘wise Latina’ statement is not the only evidence in her career to show this.
“whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society.”
This is a question we should ask her. In her most recent case overturned by the Supreme Court she decided that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was not violated when a city threw out promotion test results because of a low rate of minorities passed the test. This shows racial empathy and not a sound interpretation of the law. And I emphasize racial because if it were just plain empathy then she would have decided with Frank Ricci, a dyslexic firefighter who had his exam textbooks recorded on tape and devoted extra time to studying to ensure he was one of the top 8. He was and the test was thrown out, thus the suit against the city. Another example was her opinion on the death penalty given in a memo objecting to the death penalty in New York.
“Capital punishment is associated with evident racism in our society. The number of minorities and the poor executed or awaiting execution is out of proportion to their numbers in the population.”
Your response is probably like mine. What? Capital punishment in this country is not pursued just to kill off minorities and the poor. They are receiving capital punishment because they have committed violent crimes. There are many arguments against capital punishment, but the rationale of race should not be one of them; especially from a judge being nominated to the Supreme Court. This is not the only time her opinion has not been sufficient. In Ricci v. DeStefano, the liberal judges on the panel sided with Sotomayor, but all nine agreed that her opinion was not sufficient. This goes back to judicial activism. Her statements on this topic are fairly disturbing.
“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.”
“Our society would be strait-jacketed were not the courts, with the able assistance of the lawyers, constantly overhauling the law and adapting it to the realities of ever-changing social, industrial and political conditions.”
“It is our responsibility to explain to the public how an often unpredictable system of justice is one that serves a productive, civilized, but always evolving, society.”
“Yet law must be more or less impermanent, experimental and therefore not nicely calculable. Much of the uncertainty of law is not an unfortunate accident: it is of immense social value.”
These statements pretty much speak for themselves. And it shows in her decisions. She seems to try to manipulate the law to fit her viewpoint. In Maloney v. Cuomo, Sotomayor decided that the Second Amendment does not apply to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. In this decision she used Presser v. Illinois as her basis, which was not sufficient according to the Supreme Court. As the Heritage Foundation pointed out, “Your panel neglects to mention, however, that Presser was decided before the courts began incorporating the Bill of Rights through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller describes as “the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases.”
In her dissenting opinion for Hayden v. Pataki she ignored the legislative history of the Voting Rights Act and sided with a felon cop killer who wanted to vote. She wrongly argued that states could not prohibit felons from voting in elections. Your guess is as good as mine as to why she argued this. I imagine it had something to do with her political views.
There are many other points that could be made, but for her to say that she will be impartial is pretty ridiculous. Her judicial record says otherwise.
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