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TechnoratiSotomayor’s Reasoning
Barack Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor has brought the relationship of identity to judgment center stage in the national debates. Sotomayor was widely cited leading up to yesterday's nomination for her view that gender and ethnicity "may and will make a difference in our judging." Such views are widely held, but not widely expressed or defended. The difference with Judge Sotomayor is simply that she has put the view out there.
Critics from the right continue to spout slogans about neutrality and objectivity in reasoning, as if anyone could set aside all they know and have lived through in their assessments of a case. They are now raising the old canards about a mutually exclusive option between objective judgment versus biased reasoning. They cannot countenance the idea that identity can play any legitimate or productive role in reasoning; after all, allowing such an idea would make the pallor and body types that generally run Congress more of an evident problem.
Critics from the left are often just as confused. They think that if identity affects judgment, it looks like politics will replace reason, and reason is generally the best arm of defense the left has against the increasingly hysterical and emotional appeals of the right. They also worry that the gender and ethnic identities Sotomayor refers to will be taken up in the public airwaves in stereotyped ways, as flat, monochromatic categories without any internal diversity or fluidity.
Meanwhile, people on the street know better. They know that identity is a rough guide to experience, and that experience affects how we see things, what we notice, how we gauge the plausibility of a story, or the credibility of a speaker. It also affects what background understanding we have at our disposal, such as what life is like for children in diverse families, or among those who live paycheck to paycheck, or without paychecks. And it affects what baseline information we happen to know without having to do any research, such as knowledge about the sterilization abuse inflicted by the United States on Puerto Rican women or the history of treaty violations with American Indian tribes.
Reasoning involves judgment calls, not deductive logic. The judgment of relevance, coherence, and plausibility can be more or less rational, but they are never axiomatic.
When Anita Hill testified against Justice Thomas nearly two decades ago, Congressmen kept repeating their perplexity over the fact that she didn't "immediately report." How could such egregious offenses have really occurred if she did not march right down to the Human Resources office and report the crime? Many of us watching, many women, wondered what planet these guys lived on. Give up a good job for what would surely be a long drawn out fight with little chance to win while gaining an almost certain reputation as a trouble maker? It's hopeless nine times out of ten to fight the boss on sexual harassment, and most women know this from personal experience.
Anita Hill chose to make a fight when more than her own situation was at stake, when Thomas was put forward for a position with unimaginable power in which his small minded misogyny could conceivably harm many others. Then, it became worth the gamble of losing. The lives of others were at stake. Still, she lost.
Judge Sotomayor has simply stated upfront what most of us know full well: identity affects experience, and experience makes a difference in our judgment. It is never absolute or foolproof: Clarence Thomas's own background did not lead him to the left, thus showing that no identities are flat or monochromatic. We each have to interpret on our own what our identities mean, and in what way our experience is, or is not, relevant to a given situation. Acknowledging the relevance of identity does not replace reason with politics; it simply expands our idea of what reason is, and makes it more reasonable.
9 Comments so far
Show AllSotormayer's identity includes a category called Catholic. Her identity includes being an attorney, and an attorney can occupy larger identity circles of the ideological right or left, or sit in the middle frozen (like Obama) against civil liberties and their defense because those who honor it are always assigned to the margins of cultural identity. Sotomayer is probably one of those - like Obama himself - fearing to offend any one occupying another identity sphere known as status quo politics because their public support largely derives from this group.
My guess is Sotomayer is to the Dems what Souter was/is to the Repubs.
She has tangentally ruled on oblique issues of abortion against a woman's right to choose. The note worthy cases like the one against major league owners was a win-win for her efforts not to upset the those occupying middle ground (the more noise generated by the extreme right or left insures infiltrating the middle), thus protecting her public march to the court - which in itself - is another high profile and elitist identity circle contradicting her humble start as is the case in all people climbing the perpetual ladder of success (like Obama himself), who have long forgotten those starts (except as a sound bite for public consumption), in the quest for power, prestige, and blood money.
Am I crazy to wonder if Roe v Wade's sanctity could ever be threatened by a Supreme Court that all attend the Catholic Church.
But I'm stoked, a female Latina and all.
Like I was stoked, a black pres and all.
I get any more stoked I'll self-immolate.
Roe v. Wade, Hallowed Be Thy Name?
I agree with Alcoff, but would add that the scope of consideration goes beyond any single justice. Just as we would suspect a criminal court jury made up entirely of policemen, we ought to suspect a Supreme Court made up entirely of highly successful lawyers, white males, or any group lacking sufficient diversity to fairly represent the general population. Sotomayor's identity will be a welcome factor in a group of nine that heretofore has excluded anyone with her identity.
Sotomayor's statement that "A wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life" could have been better phrased, or maybe should be understood in context. It seems clear she was stating that the woman would probably reach a better conclusion about matters relevant to "the richness of her experience" than would a white male lacking that experience. I don't have a problem with that. It's an affirmation of the position I stated above about the desirability of diversity on the court. She wasn't saying a "wise Latina woman" would generally make better decisions than white males. Nor was she saying that everybody should defer to her judgment on matters in which she has unique experience.
Newt Gingrich has made a well-publicized fuss about the "wise Latina" statement. I'm really saddened that anyone would pay attention to him. When federal judges in the Ninth Circuit determined that public school children shouldn't be forced to intone each day that the United States is "under God," Gingrich declared, "any judge who would drive recognition of God from the public arena so profoundly misunderstands the nature of America that they should not be allowed to stay on the bench." If I were a believer in prayer, I would say, God forbid that Gingrich ever gets to decide who becomes a justice.
Sioux Rose
MANNING: Good post. Personally, I'd like to see Gingrich roasted the way they do pigs on the island of Puerto Rico. The only persons further removed from the very concept of God would be Cheney and Bush. Gingrich plays the 'god card" just to get the right wing church crowd to go along with his rob the poor to help the rich policies. Some think he's highly intelligent. Too bad con men sometimes are glib. It's a good way of directing attention away from the pockets they are so busy picking.
Identity: Catholic--Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts are Catholic, i.e., at least, what they claim to be. I, too, am Catholic but I find nothing in common with them.
Identity: in 2000 five justices appointed by Republican presidents and proud of their GOP credentials, voted to destroy the "identity" of voters in Florida because of the fact that if the identity were known, a democrat would become the president.
The right wing is worried about Sotomayor's identity perhaps because they know all too well how they have stacked the deck by insisting on the "identity" of their appointments to the court.
The fault I find with Obama is that he seems to lack the political instinct to "get even". As a result, much of the damage done in the last presidency will remain unfixed.
OK enough of the phony tabloid fluff; Now, what about her actual record and experience as a lawyer and judge? Key decisions? I guess that is not important.
I don't know her background on economic justice except for that baseball case but if Wall Street isn't complaining, she could be yet another justice to sellout. Roberts and Alito were not grilled for their pro-corporate sidings as judges and lawyers so I don't expect to see any litmus tests on how she will interpret the laws when it comes to economic justice. Too bad all the focus is on her being Hispanic and Catholic.
It is important since most of the U.S. will only look at this stuff.
If you want to know the legal record and key decisions, see the first rate recap here:
http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/sotomayors-record-the-ricci-effect/#more-9634
That link only provides an analysis, interesting though it is, of one decision that Sotomayor participated in.