TheLoop21.com

By: Michael E. Ross (Add to your loop)
Wed, 05/27/2009 - 02:32

President Obama and Sonia Sotomayor, his Supreme Court nominee.

Oct. 5, the first Monday in October, is already shaping up to be a momentous day in American history. On that day, barring a protracted period of political wrangling, Sonia Sotomayor will take her place as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, the 111th justice and the first Hispanic in the history of the court.

President Barack Obama’s nomination of Sotomayor on Tuesday morning, to replace retiring Justice David Souter, ends speculation on whom he would name, one of the presidency’s heaviest undertakings and the one with the greatest impact on the lives of Americans.

“What Sonia will bring to the Court … is not only the knowledge and experience acquired over a course of a brilliant legal career, but the wisdom accumulated from an inspiring life's journey,” the president said Tuesday from the East Room of the White House.

The advantages to President Obama are obvious. In one smart stroke, Obama addresses the matter of the court’s proportional representation of America vis-à-vis gender and ethnicity, and does so with the nomination of a judge whose qualifications stem not just from experience on the bench, but also from a personal narrative derived from everyday life.

The advantages for the United States stem from what her appointment says about our country.

An American story

Sonia Sotomayor's story is thoroughly American. A product of a public housing project in the South Bronx and educated in Catholic schools, Sotomayor was early identified as a precocious, gifted student. “Sonia's mom bought the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood,” Obama said Tuesday.

After her father died when she was 9 years old, Sotomayor parlayed a love of the Nancy Drew mysteries into a love of learning and, ultimately, of the law. She went on to be class valedictorian at Blessed Sacrament and at Cardinal Spellman High School in New York.

A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton and a graduate of Yale Law School, she was nominated to the U.S. District Court by President George H.W. Bush in 1992, and was nominated to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals by President Bill Clinton in 1998.

“In 1998, Judge Sotomayor became the first Latina to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, one of the most demanding circuits in the country. She has participated in over 3,000 panel decisions and authored roughly 400 opinions, handling difficult issues of constitutional law, to complex procedural matters, to lawsuits involving complicated business organizations,” the White House said Tuesday in a statement.

"Walking in the door," Obama said Tuesday, "she would bring more experience on the bench and more varied experience on the bench than anyone currently serving on the United States Supreme Court had when they were appointed.”

Justifiably, if predictably, Latinos in and out of government hailed the choice. Cesar Perales, executive director of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a New York-based civil rights group, told The Washington Post that Obama’s pick of Sotomayor was “the most important Hispanic appointment that has been made in this country's history. It is a recognition that we are coming of age, that we can be one of nine wise people on the Supreme Court, making decisions that affect everyone in this country.”

"It's a great appointment," Puerto Rico Democratic Rep. Pedro Pierluisi told MSNBC. "Her credentials speak for themselves. I feel confident she'll get quickly confirmed by the Senate."

“I hope that as the Senate and American people learn more about me, they will see that I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences,” Sotomayor said Tuesday. “I strive never to forget the real-world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses and government."

President Obama said he considered several factors in making his choice: “a rigorous intellect, a mastery of the law, an ability to home in on the key issues and provide clear answers to complex legal questions,” as well as “a recognition of the limits of the judicial role.”

The quality of 'empathy'

But it’s this quality of “empathy” that Obama spoke of earlier this year when he outlined the qualities he was looking for in a Supreme Court Justice — an understanding of what everyday people go through in life, if for no other reason than to more fully appreciate the impact of a court’s rulings on those people.

That quality doesn’t replace adherence to constitutional values. It enhances adherence to those values by understanding that — witness the more momentous and populist opinions of justices Brandeis, Marshall, Warren and Douglas — interpretation of the law has an innately empathic component.

Like the election of the man who nominated her, Sotomayor symbolizes the possibilities, the elastic properties of the American Dream; how, now more than ever, that dream can be achieved by anyone because of its availability to everyone; how it’s possible to level the playing field with intellect and drive …

And a good set of encyclopedias.

Veteran journalist Michael E. Ross has worked at The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Jose Mercury News, msnbc.com and elsewhere; and was formerly an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism. His reviews, fiction, essays and criticism have also appeared in The Times Book Review, Essence, Wired, Entertainment Weekly, Konch, Salon, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Root, PopMatters and other publications. Author of the novel Flagpole Days (2003), and the essay collection Interesting Times (2004), he contributed to the anthologies MultiAmerica (1997), and Soul Food (2000). His newest collection of Weblogs and essays, American Bandwidth, will be published in the summer of 2009. 

Is President Obama's pick, Sonia Sotomayor, a good Supreme Court choice?

Yes, I'm glad she's a minority

No, she's too liberal

I'm not sure