Curtis A. Bronzan

The Supreme Court confirmation proceedings for Judge Sonia Sotomayor continued today. I am interested in the previous comments she has made, but even more so in what others have – and continue to – make of them.

Yesterday, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, addressed a statement made by Sotomayor:

During a speech 15 years ago, Judge Sotomayor said, ‘I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt… continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies, and prejudices are appropriate.’ And in the same speech she said, ‘My experiences will affect the facts I choose to see as a judge.’

In light of her now famous statement regarding the superiority of Latin women, he later continued:

Each assumed that the nominee misspoke. But the nominee did not misspeak. She is on record making this statement at least five times over the course of a decade. These are her own words, spoken well before her nomination. They are not taken out of context.

And later, he juxtaposed these statements with the oath judges take:

I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me… under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God.

The necessary question, then – assuming that Sotomayor did mean these statements as Sessions reports, of course – is an epistemological and hermeneutical one; is she at fault for assuming her ethnicity most effectively prepares her to make judgments? Have not men from European-American descent assumed this since America’s founding?

With her Princeton and Yale education, it may a little difficult to establish connections between Sotomayor and Liberation Theology, though questioning the role of the movement in context of the highest court in the land can’t hurt. So, a quick question, if we are really concerned with achieving justice for “the poor and the rich,” what could it hurt having some judges “from below”?

I’m thinking of Žižek’s Violence here, too, alongside Leonardo Boff. Maybe we need more “violence” after all.