Who better to understand the issue of life and death, than one who gives life thru a birth? How are the elite able to perceive the nuances in the bill of rights, if by virtue of position rights and respect are automatic? More later.

Supreme Court Justices are there to interpret the law per the constitution. It doesn’t matter whether the person is woman, man, of color, etc., what matters is they fulfill their obligation to judge based on the law not personal experience or bias. PERIOD!!

You can’t be a fair,balanced judge without pain or heartache of some kind. “Pain is perfect teacher.” The rich like all elites are different they have no wants or pains. They have the best of everything and every body wants to please them or else… To expect justice from the rich is to expect a fair deal from shaitan.

Rich people have plenty of wants and pains, just not the same ones as us common folk.

Every person on the Court is the sum of their lives’ experiences and education, meaning they all have some biases. It’s not evil to be biased; it’s human nature. Regardless, the only criteria for appointment to the Supreme Court should be the ability to interpret the law based on the Constitution. If Sotomayor, or any other Justice, can’t put aside their biases and judge impartially, they have no business on the bench.

@Terri Tonge
I totally agree.

I sure have to agree with Kevin.

Sotomayor has said that her background will make her a better judge than a white man. Therefore I have to assume that her background will have a large effect on her decisions.

Yeah, I agree rich people have wants and pains. They want more power and position. The pain the get are only from not getting their way and the occacional paper cut every decade or so. people like that make great Judges Right? Roberts, Scalia & Alito ring a bell? lets not forget silent Thomas. All members of 3rd generation well to families. As I said I’d get a better deal from Shaitan than from the afore mentioned four.

This is the Supreme Court we are talking about. A trial judge, on occasion, may need to rely on her/his experiences to assess credibility of a witness, to analyze the relevance of a statement or to otherwise examine the FACTS.

The Supreme Court does not decide (should not–see below) facts. It determines what the words of the Constitution, of prior SC opinions, of statutes or of regulations mean. They examine “intent” of those words, not by referencing their experiences, but by scholarly research and erudite parsing of complex words or ambiguous words/phrases.

Thus, I would argue that gender, racial, economic or whatever other “demographic” labels are 1000% irrelevant to selection of a Justice.

Political history has allowed such debates to be made. And some level of comfort of the judged may benefit from a Supreme Court that looks like America. The only criteria ought to be intellectual excellence. The lowest moment in the SC nomination process was when Sen. Hruska said in defense of G. Harold Carswell:

“Even if he is mediocre,there are a lot of mediocre judges and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Cardozos, and Frankfurters, and stuff like that there.”

Judge Sotomayor does not reflect any of my views but the ONLY test should be whether she can be expected to bring a first class intellect and apply that ability fairly.

I mentioned earlier that the Supreme Court should not, under the Constitution, decide fact. I would argue that Roe v. Wade made a finding of FACT– when life began. There are things called judicial facts and legislative facts. The Warren Court violated the Constitution when it decided when life began. The war of words and violence that has resulted demonstrates that that Court did great harm. However well intentioned the Court may have been, the resolution of this complex, emotional conflict was not done any favors by this premature decision.

@Abraham Ben Judea
Their backgrounds are as irrelevant as is Sotomayor’s. As I said, if Sotomayor, or any other Justice, can’t put aside their biases and judge impartially, they have no business on the bench.

Race matters. If even one person of African descent had been on the Supreme Court, the Dred Scott decision would not have supported slavery in 1857.

There is only one criterion for a Supreme Court Justice: adhere to the Constitution to the letter. Every Justice swears an oath “..to support and defend the Constitution….” There is no other criterion. Those who adhere to the notion that the Constitution is a “Living Document” are embracing psychobabble. The Constitution as written is most specific. Using any outside criterion for “interpretation” is a violation of every Justice’s oath of office.

@JRL
@ JRL–Assuming that your historic revision of history is a plausible premise, the vote would have been 6-3. There was no 14th Amendment then, the laws (unjust they were in retrospect) in effect at that time did not support his position. Race may have changed one vote, and even the eloquent advocacy of one African American Justice could not have changed the outcome. Not until the Warren Court did jurisprudence recognize the activism that would have been necessary to make the findings needed to release Dred Scott. Dred Scott was a wrong decision in moral terms; however, in jurisprudential terms at that time, it was the law. Sad, but true.

What does a SCOTUS judge do when confronted with a first impression case. Show me a person who is emotionaly detached, a person who is able to place politics aside no matter the case. I’ll show you someone unfit to judge, a dangerous person to this country no matter the office. Our last president was known to be devoid of feelings very much like Huey Long. Anybody remember Mr.Long? Cold impersonal, didn’t care for personal relations. Only had a passion for power and politics.

SM I beg to differ. Roe V Wade got to Scotus not about life or abortion.
If I recall It got to Scotus as a case of a Woman’s right to privacy within the confines of a visit to a doctor. And requesting a very private procedure. I could be wrong. I’ll let others correct me.

A very good topic this time. Full of raw emotion and rightfull intellect. I love it…

@Abraham Ben Judea Agreed!

@SM, a Practical Libertarian
Too often the language of the constitution allows for multiple interpretation, leading to a search for “original intent” on the part of the framers. However, original intent, like beauty, lives in the eye of the beholder. If that much law is going to be decided by opinion of opinion, then we are better off as a nation to have more eyes on the subject than simply those of balding white guys. That at least provides a balance that counteracts a single set of prejudices.

@Bob Ludwig
@Bob– I hope that you really did not intend to say that all white males think the same way.

Or to turn your logic on its head, do believe that the eyes of Justice Thomas perceive “intent” differently than Justice Scalia; so racial origin does not correlate with intellectual differences.

Or a further iteration, how do you explain the similarities of opinions between, for example,between Justice Souter and Justice Ginsburg– two individuals of dramatically different religious and class background plus the obvious gender difference.

The facts just do not prove your beauty analogy in this Supreme Court or past benches. BECAUSE ALL OF THE CURRENT JUSTICES ARE INTELLECTUALLY QUALIFIED, THEIR BACKGROUNDS MATTER NOT AS MUCH AS THEIR POWERS OF REASONING.

“Intent”, as a matter of jurisprudence, should not just be a matter of subjective judgment. The scholars, who devote their academic lives to researching the writings of the authors of the Constitution, provide lengthy, thoughtful analyses of the Framers’ word. If there is a “picture”, to use your analogy, the frame is tight when it comes to intent.

Saying that a Justice bases her/his decisions based on their race or gender or age or economic status is an incredible insult to all of the Justices who have served this country and their oaths so well.

Like it or not, the Supreme Court has become our ultimate legislative body. We are ruled by case law because the Constitution “says” what they say it says and has been that way right from the start. Did the writers intend for that to happen or did they screw up?

Bill, Do you really get the impresion that they had no intent when you read the the preamble to the constitution? I get chills every time I read the preamble. Where is your copy?

Preamble is to Constitution as legislation title is to legislation content. Any resemblance is purely coincidental. The Devil is always in the details.

If it was not intended that the Supremes should be our rulers than Congress should have been given the ability to overturn a ruling with a super majority. From the very start, the ground rules were “The Constitution says what we say it says,” Chief Justice John Marshall. (?)

The Supreme Court, I believe was established to decide cases based solely on our Constitution. Race and political views SHOULD NOT ENTER INTO THEIR DECISIONS, BUT ONLY WHETHER AN ISSUE IS CONSTITUTIONAL OR NOT!!!

So if race, etc should not matter, we should not be alarmed that a Latina sit on the court any more than a white man. I am not worried.