Who does she own? Jeff Rosen, that’s who:
Emily, you are so right that Jeff Rosen’s unsupported whispers about Judge Sotomayor have become the conventional media wisdom in three short days. But more troubling still, he seems to have been arguing that female jurists are by definition “mediocre” for more than a decade! Here’s a piece he did for the New York Times in 1995, arguing that President Clinton’s “single-minded pursuit of diversity, combined with an eagerness to avoid controversy, has kept him from appointing the best available legal minds to the courts.” He then names the many, many white men passed over for federal judgeships and contends that liberal judges lack the intellectual firepower to challenge brilliant conservative jurists because “nearly 60 percent of the Clinton appointments have been minority members and women.” (Read: mediocre.) His single data point to illustrate that mediocrity: Instead of appointing a serious intellectual heavyweight to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (a/k/a “The scholars Court”), Clinton tapped “Diane P. Wood, a little-known professor of antitrust law at the University of Chicago, who is currently an assistant to Deputy Attorney General Anne Bingaman.”
That same mediocre Diane Wood is not only on every shortlist for the Supreme Court today. She’s also widely regarded as one of the finest judges on the bench, to whom other brilliant judges turn for reviews of draft opinions.
I’ve been busy this week, so I haven’t had time to put together my thoughts on Rosen’s asinine article which, near as I can tell, said that Sonia Sotomayor was occasionally brusque, which would be great if she was Antonin Scalia, but alas, she lacks a penis, so she’s instead a raging bitch. Oh, and she’s dumb, because she’s a woman, and obviously graduated summa cum laude from Princeton (winning the highest award given to Princeton students in the process) because of afirmative action, probably at the cost of a more-qualified marginal white guy. And then she graduated from Yale’s law school, where she served as an editor on law review — again, probably at the expense of a connected white guy. And then she served as an Assistant New York District Attorney, probably just because she’s Latina. And then she ended up a partner at Pavia and Harcourt, which probably just promoted her because of PC whining.
Then, of course, she was appointed to the bench by committed lefty George H.W. Bush in 1991, in a move surely designed to get women and Latinos off his back. Then Bill Clinton appointed her to the Court of Appeals in 1997, again, clearly as a sop to minorities. I mean, obviously, this woman rose from the daughter of working-class parents, whose father died when she was nine, whose mother raised her and her brother to become a jurist and a medical doctor, respectively, only because those damn minorities and women get all the breaks that white guys don’t.
Needless to say, Judge Sotomayor would make an exceptional nominee to the Supreme Court. She’s everything we say we want in an American — someone who pulled herself up by her bootstraps, who lived the American dream. But she’s a woman, and she’s a Latina. In Jeff Rosen’s world, that’s clear evidence that she’s a step below her betters. That her betters are all white guys need not even be mentioned.
(Via Balloon Juice)
Is there any chance that Dahlia Lithwick could be appointed to the Supreme Court?
Phil,
No.
Technically, there’s a chance; realistically, none whatsoever. Nor would I really want her there, given that I think collegiality is a good quality and I doubt she has it. I love Dahlia Lithwick, but my love is based in part on exactly those aspects of her personality that are incompatible with sitting at a conference table with Antonin Scalia without throwing stuff at him. Fabulous for a writer, terrible for a justice. (I think Scalia’s own lack of courtesy also calls into question whether he has a good temperament for his position, but not much we can do about that now.)
Re: the original post, I agree with it entirely except perhaps this sarcastic bit:
And then she graduated from Yale’s law school, where she served as an editor on law review — again, probably at the expense of a connected white guy.
I don’t know how the Yale Law Journal was doing it during Sotomayor’s time there, but diversity is a component of making law review at some Ivy League law schools today, and an important component of making Ed Board. My law school’s flagship publication reportedly had a Notes Editor who didn’t even get her own Note completed on time, but she was elected by the previous board because she was likable and they wanted a woman of color.
I support affirmative action, and I don’t like to pretend that there are no situations whatsoever in which being of a non-white/ non-male/ non-hetero identity helps. I’m skeptical that those specific situations outweigh all the ways in which minority identities are a burden, but those situations do exist. And it creates even greater bitterness over the issue to pretend that they don’t exist.
Stephen L. Carter provides some useful historical perspective on Supreme Court confirmation hearings in which nominees are required to come before the Senate and answer questions: they’re basically a product of Southern resistance to Brown v. Board.
Re: Yale Law Review
On the one hand, I don’t think diversity is counted for much (if at all) in Yale Law Review elections. On the other hand, it is not hard to become an editor on the Yale Law Review. Everyone’s an editor (I mean, editor is the general rank of everyone who doesn’t have a particular job – like Articles Editor or Executive Editor or whatever), and pretty much anyone who takes the process seriously can be on law review. I know there have been changes over the years, so I don’t know if that was true in Ms. Sotomayor’s day, but at least currently, being on law review doesn’t really mean much in the context of YLS students.