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Tag: SCOTUS

Facing Down Condescension and Lectures, Sotomayor Teaches Senators About Civics and More

My thought about Sotomayor are up at RH Reality Check. A teaser:

If there’s one thing that this week’s Senate confirmation hearings made clear, it’s that Judge Sotomayor is not just a great mind, but a patient and generous teacher. Surrounded by senators who seemed primarily concerned with topping each other in condescension, Sotomayor responded with respect, nuance and a solid grounding in the law – to the point where the hearings sometimes felt like a high school civics class, with Sotomayor explaining the fundamentals of our legal system. The biggest surprises of the hearings so far haven’t come from Sotomayor herself, but from the ignorance and arrogance shown by some members of the GOP. And the biggest pay-off won’t just be from Sotomayor’s confirmation – although that will certainly happen – but from the GOP’s torching of any goodwill it hasn’t already set aflame with women and racial minorities.

Supreme Court rules strip-search of child was illegal

Good news:

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a school’s strip search of an Arizona teenage girl accused of having prescription-strength ibuprofen was illegal.

In an 8-1 ruling, the justices said school officials violated the law with their search of Savana Redding in the rural eastern Arizona town of Safford.

Redding, who now attends college, was 13 when officials at Safford Middle School ordered her to remove her clothes and shake out her underwear because they were looking for pills — the equivalent of two Advils. The district bans prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the school was acting on a tip from another student.

This one seems like a no-brainer to me, but Clarence Thomas apparently disagrees — he was the one (unintentionally hilarious) dissenting voice:

In a dissent, Justice Clarence Thomas found the search legal and said the court previously had given school officials “considerable leeway” under the Fourth Amendment in school settings.

Officials had searched the girl’s backpack and found nothing, Thomas said. “It was eminently reasonable to conclude the backpack was empty because Redding was secreting the pills in a place should thought no one would look,” Thomas said.

Thomas warned that the majority’s decision could backfire. “Redding would not have been the first person to conceal pills in her undergarments,” he said. “Nor will she be the last after today’s decision, which announces the safest place to secrete contraband in school.”

Thomas only restates what high school girls everywhere have always known: Your panties are the safest place to secrete.

Posted in Law

On GRITtv with Laura Flanders

The lovely Laura Flanders graciously had me on her show today, along with Mario Murillo and Russ Baker. In small-world strangeness, Mario was my first journalism professor at NYU. It was a great panel, and even though I say “you know” too much, I think it’s worth checking out, if only for the very insightful commentary from Laura, Mario and Russ. We discuss Dr. Tiller, Obama’s Middle East trip, GM, and Sotomayor:

So when does Laura get her own cable news show?

Name That Quote.

Who do you think made this empathetic, identity-politics-reliant statement?

I tried to in my opening statement, I tried to provide a little picture of who I am as a human being and how my background and my experiences have shaped me and brought me to this point.
…
I don’t come from an affluent background or a privileged background. My parents were both quite poor when they were growing up.

And I know about their experiences and I didn’t experience those things. I don’t take credit for anything that they did or anything that they overcame.

But I think that children learn a lot from their parents and they learn from what the parents say. But I think they learn a lot more from what the parents do and from what they take from the stories of their parents lives.

And that’s why I went into that in my opening statement. Because when a case comes before me involving, let’s say, someone who is an immigrant — and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases — I can’t help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn’t that long ago when they were in that position.

And so it’s my job to apply the law. It’s not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result.

But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, “You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country.”

When I have cases involving children, I can’t help but think of my own children and think about my children being treated in the way that children may be treated in the case that’s before me.

And that goes down the line. When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account. When I have a case involving someone who’s been subjected to discrimination because of disability, I have to think of people who I’ve known and admire very greatly who’ve had disabilities, and I’ve watched them struggle to overcome the barriers that society puts up often just because it doesn’t think of what it’s doing — the barriers that it puts up to them.

So those are some of the experiences that have shaped me as a person.

Read More…Read More…

Racism, Sexism and Sotomayor, in a few easy-to-read bullet points.

Some notes to conservatives and journalists:

1. Sonia Sotomayor is a judge. It is her job to ask questions. Many judges — including, notably, Antonin Scalia — are known for their assertive styles and difficult questions. Scalia, though, is revered for his blunt style. Sotomayor’s “temperment” is discussed as if she were a racehorse or a dog being bred for certain characteristics. I wonder if a male justice would be regularly described as “strident” and “vocal”? Also, this comment: “She used her questioning to make a point,” he said, “as opposed to really looking for an answer to a question she did not understand” could just as easily describe Scalia or any other sitting Supreme Court justice. Part of the question-asking process is to challenge the attorney’s position, not just to clarify.

2. “Spanish” is a language. “Illegal alien” is not. Menstruation does not impact the ability of a Supreme Court justice to do her job.

3. La Raza is not “a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses.” Also? The hoods and nooses are kind of important factors.

4. Sonia Sotomayor has just about everything one could hope for in a Supreme Court nominee. She was educated at two of the finest academic institutions in the country — and she got there by working her ass off, not through legacy admissions or silver-spoon privilege. She graduated at the top of her class from both places, and served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She worked as a prosecutor in New York City. She has served on the federal district bench and on the Second Circuit. She has heard thousands of cases and written hundreds of opinions. Is she an “affirmative action pick?” Sure, insofar as affirmative action means “casting a wider net so that highly-qualified people other than white men are taken into consideration.” Is she a token, which is what conservatives mean when they use the phrase “affirmative action?” Uh, no. And arguing that such a highly-qualified woman only achieved what she did because of tokenism is absurd and offensive, bordering on delusional.

5. Hey! Hateful white-dude-guy! You’re a loud, ignorant asshole who is willing to cash in on racism and sexism! Here are your own radio and TV shows!

Red Velvet Cupcakes Made Me Do It

It’s true: One’s love of a particular food group is highly influential when it comes to performing the duties of one’s job. Personally, I discovered red velvet cupcakes, and the next thing I knew I was a hairy-legged man-hater. I wonder what Puerto Rican food will do to Sonia Sotomayor? Maybe all the pig will make her more sympathetic to conservatives?

Sotomayor also claimed: “For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir — rice, beans and pork — that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events.”

This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo — pigs’ tongue and ears — would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.

Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative-leaning advocacy group, said he wasn’t certain whether Sotomayor had claimed her palate would color her view of legal facts but he said that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee clearly touts her subjective approach to the law.

“It’s pretty disturbing,” said Levey. “It’s one thing to say that occasionally a judge will despite his or her best efforts to be impartial … allow occasional biases to cloud impartiality.

Actually, comparing Sonia Sotomayor to Sarah Palin is kind of insulting

No, Sotomayor is not getting Palin-ed.

I’m the last person who is going to stand up for the media’s crappy treatment of Sarah Palin during the Presidential elections, but I do think intelligence and achievement are fair issues to bring up when considering an elected official or a Supreme Court justice. And while I don’t think Sarah Palin is dumb, do think it was pretty clear that she did not know the necessary basics to fulfill the role of Vice President (I also think it’s pretty clear that Bush didn’t know the necessary basics to fulfill the role of President).

It’s ridiculous to compare someone like Sarah Palin to someone like Sonia Sotomayor. Yes, they have both endured sexist attacks. But suggesting that they’re being attacked in the same unfair way? No. It’s a little more complicated than “Sarah and Sonia are both being called dumb.” The reality is that Sarah Palin was a governor with very limited political experience who sold her candidacy on her “values” and attacked intellectualism as “elitism.” Sonia Sotomayor has more experience than nearly any other current member of the Supreme Court at the time of their appointment. She got into Princeton by the sheer force of her hard work and intelligence — not an achievement that many (or even most) college students can claim. She graduated at the top of her class, and went on to Yale Law, where she was an editor of the Law Journal. She was appointed to the federal district court by George HW Bush, and then to the Second Circuit by Bill Clinton, where she penned hundreds of opinions and heard thousands of cases.

It’s a slap in the face to mention her name in the same sentence as Sarah Palin, let alone argue that the two women are intellectual equals. I have no desire to discuss Palin’s intelligence or to bring her down, but I’m confused as to why we’re bothering to bring her up here.

Add into that the fact that Sotomayor isn’t being attacked just on gender lines — the right-wing assault on her has been deeply racist. The argument that she’s “stupid” is both gendered and racialized — no white man with her legal pedigree would be called “stupid,” but you can bet that a man of color would.

She’s not being “Palin-ed.” She’s being subjected to racist, sexist attacks. We can address and respond to those on the merits without bringing Sarah Palin into it.

Weighing Sotomayor’s Opinions

I have a piece up in RH Reality Check today about Sotomayor’s various legal opinions, including her one reproductive-rights-related decision (which has a conclusion that none of us are going to like). A teaser:

Sotomayor would not have been my first choice, primarily because my political leanings are far to the left of her legal theory. But I’ll be supporting her whole-heartedly. Her trail of opinions paints a picture of a fair-minded, incisive legal scholar who is unafraid to stake out unpopular but legally meritorious positions. Right-wingers are going to oppose her nomination with full force – we would be foolish to do it for them.

Check it out.