Sotomayor: Too Many Catholics, Jews, on the Supreme Court

[Purveyor]

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the nation’s highest court needs more diversity of personal backgrounds and professional experience, speaking as a vacancy has refocused attention on the court’s makeup.

During a talk Friday at Brooklyn Law School, Sotomayor didn’t mention the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, who is highly respected but wouldn’t add racial, religious, or educational diversity to the high court. But Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina justice, said “it is important that we have greater diversity on the Supreme Court” and in the legal profession.

“I, for one, do think there is a disadvantage from having (five) Catholics, three Jews, everyone from an Ivy League school,” several justices from New York City and no one who practiced criminal defense law outside white-collar settings, Sotomayor told the law school audience.

Sotomayor and some of her colleagues have said before that the high court could benefit from more diversity, but her remarks Friday come in the fraught context of a nomination in unusual limbo.

Since conservative Justice Antonin Scalia’s January death left Democratic President Barack Obama with the chance to fill a seat that could shift the court’s ideological balance, Senate Republicans have said they will not consider confirming anyone named before the November presidential election.

- See more at: http://www.afro.com/sotomayor-us-high-court-needs-more-diversity-in-many-ways/#sthash.6jx9HVs5.dpuf

[kcjohn1]

1. I certaintly agree with her about diversity of background

All of them are either from Yale or Harvard.

If that doesn't speak to how there is elite consensus in the establishment, I don't know what does.

[hollowdweller]

42. I agree with her that they need somebody with a criminal defense background.

[drokhole]

56. Yep, insider's club. As Thomas Frank said, they consider...

..."your time spent at some fancy sounding university is what defines you as an individual."

And the bigger problem is the rest of the ruling class were their actual classmates in college. So, if they have a case that comes before the court, you can guess who the "justices" are more likely to rule in favor of

[rug]

2. Sounds like Kelly.

http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/03/potential-nominee-judge-jane-kelly-former-public-defender/

[bhikkhu]

3. An unfortunate statement, which sounds like bigotry

perhaps it is, or perhaps it just sounds like it.

The idea that "Jew" or "Catholic" is a type of thinking rather than an individual person - the basic counter-argument would be that there is greater diversity of character between individuals within those two groups than between those two groups themselves. Even that would assume that there is some reliable way of defining the thinking of a group, such as "Catholics think this" or "Jews think that"; which there isn't.

[Kokonoe]

21. Very True

Its what a person is, and not from geniticals.

[HillareeeHillaraah]

27. Sometimes my geniticals....

But only when I'm wearing lacy undies....

[Kokonoe]

32. .

[AllyCat]

28. They choose their religion and schooling. Fair assessment

[bhikkhu]

36. People are born into their religion

and again, if you think that "catholic" is a characteristic type of thinking that defines an individual, you don't know very many catholics. In the case of "Jew", that is used as either a racial or religious term, and defines an individual even less.

I was raised in a catholic family and went to catholic school myself for 8 years. A common joke is that the best atheists start out that way. Among my friends were catholic stoners, catholic athletes, catholic math whizzes, a catholic history professor, many catholic republicans, catholic democrats...etc, etc. The term defines nothing except a single circumstances of one's birth, which has little bearing on the character of that person later in life.

. I believe we need diversity on the court as well, but diversity of opinion and perspective is the critical thing. An erroneous and bigoted viewpoint would be that you can get that diversity by selecting according to gender, skin color, race, and what church a person was raised in. Really all of that is beside the point, its the mind that matters.

[AllyCat]

37. Raised Catholic. Changed when I realized it was an anti-woman anti-gay clearinghouse

Not all Catholic people are like that, but it is the official policy of the church. Religion is a choice.

[Crash2Parties]

63. People are not born into their religion

They don't even understand words and have no values at birth.

Religion is learned.

[eppur_se_muova]

30. So, accepting one particularl narrow dogma vs others doesn't reflect your thinking ?

That POV is ... um ... interesting.

[passiveporcupine]

34. Nothing bigoted about it.

It's an entirely rational statement.

Catholics are not genetics, and Jewism doesn't necessarily mean "practicing the faith", but I don't know much about the Jews on the SC or their religious proclivities. But she is right that they are representing a country with many more "religious" or "non-religious" points of view. We do have a little racial diversity, and finally more than just one woman on the court (although I'd like to see it more evenly split). We could use someone LGBT, and we could use an atheist as well as a protestant (maybe even a Muslim). Catholics, if practicing and devout, follow a fairly strict list of rules that go against many things a progressive country should be working towards.

I think she is very wise in her statements. And the idea of someone not coming from an ivy league school is good too.

Diversity is good.

[bhikkhu]

38. Diversity is good, but you have to look at people as individuals to see it

Bigotry can be defined as judging individuals based on their arbitrary placement within some group or other. Arbitrary meaning born into a race, a religion, a gender, a skin color, or whatever superficial characteristic. In all cases it is a matter of making a judgement about an individual using a criteria that tells you nothing about that that individual. Assuming knowledge about a person's mind based on their physical appearance or religious affiliation isn't wise.

I grew up among Catholics. Not one of them was devout in any demonstrable way. Politically they ran the spectrum, splitting fairly evenly between Reagan and Carter during that election, for instance. Most of them disagreed with the vatican on women's rights; all of them disagreed with the vatican on birth control, as far as I saw. The idea of some puppet-master determining who people are based on how they were born is wrong-headed.

[passiveporcupine]

50. I agree you can't go completely by labels

Just because someone has not been devout in their personal life, does not mean they won't lean on those basic beliefs they were raised with when making laws. They may not personally follow what they do in court, but if the catholic church says it should be this way, they may tend to lean that way for over-reaching laws that affect a country with a lot of catholics in it, who may be devout.

You see our current supreme court voting in favor of things that support Catholic views like the Hobby Lobby case. Because we have too many conservative catholics on the court.
Conservatism or liberalism also affects how they apply their religious beliefs. They may not be a devout catholic at home, but they may be very conservative in their public views and believe other people should behave like conservative devout Catholics (you know, like republicans who talk family values in politics, then have an affair in their real life). It's OK for them, but not others. Liberals will tend to be less rigid in applying rules like that. They are more open minded, so you can't just look at one label when trying to judge someone. You look at their religion, combined with their political views, and other things, and make calculations based on all of it together.

Perception for the whole nation is important too. If we had all catholic, white, male judges, it wouldn't matter how diverse they actually were; much of the country would be very unhappy with that image. For example, you might be a catholic judge, who is not devout, but the people you represent include Muslims. Even a non-devout catholic cannot really bring a Muslim perspective into the court, if he/she hasn't lived it. That is the most important part of diversity. Bringing different perspectives into the mix.





'

[Crash2Parties]

62. It is a way of thinking

"The idea that "Jew" or "Catholic" is a type of thinking"

Religious beliefs are opinions. Personal, irrational (ie cannot be proven) opinions. As such they are very much a, "way of thinking" and seeing the world. They are a set of values. And insofar as diversity goes, there are good reasons people who study such things actually call the larger grouping, "Judeo-Christian".

[RobinA]

68. Personally,

I care less about the Jewish/Catholic issue (I am neither), and more about the fact that it seems no one who isn't from Harvard or Yale is deemed capable of running this country. It's not even Ivies, it's two Ivies. Nobody from Stanford capable of high level legal thinking? Or any other thinking required by government God knows they ought to be able to find someone from even [gasp] a second tier law school that can out-nuance Scalia.

And I agree about the diverse background when it comes to practice. Hell, I know a person from Yale who did public interest law most of his career, so diversity of practice wouldn't really require them to leave their favorite schools.

[Hortensis]

4. We should break out of that mold.

I wouldn't turn down Garland in this situation because he was Jewish, but! Clarence Thomas is certainly no replacement for Thurgood Marshall, so there's a big hole in the court there. Many minorities would not consider blacks, Hispanics, or Jews as representing them. WE NEED MORE WOMEN, and more atheists, but one justice should be white Protestant male surely?

We obviously need to double the size of the court. Until then I'd still put first emphasis on the quality of the legal mind and the person's probity.

[yeoman6987]

8. There are 3 woman out of 9. We probably need 1 more for sure. 2 for a majority

As far as religion goes, I don't think that should be a qualifier one way or the other. What were their views on court cases they argued or "judged". That is most important. As far as race on the court.....I think at least 1 more Hispanic and 1 african American. Not sure why only 1 white guy considering the country is still 77 percent white population, but not sure we have to be exact in stats. One stat that has never happened has been an African American Woman.....that should really have happened already. Hopefully next administration will do that. It is important to have representation of everybody if possible.

It is so true that the court needs to be much larger. 15 or 21 might be a good start.

[jonestonesusa]

13. White population isn't 77%

And there are plenty of males on the court.

Offhand, I believe the country is now about 12% African American, 13% Latino, 6-7% Asian American, and 1-2% indigenous. Majority of children will be of color by 2020 or so and the overall majority nonwhite by 2050.

[Igel]

40. That's because you're weighting things for non-white.

Latino isn't a race. Non-Latino whites are about 63% of the population, but if you include Latino whites then the white population (using the census' definition of "white&quot is around 77%.

That's what happens when you define yourself as what you're not. I've seen people insist they're not white, they're Jewish. Blond, blue-eyed, pale-skinned non-white Jewish. Because "white" is something they didn't want to be, trying to make it into an ethnicity.

1 Asian, 1 Latino, 1 African-American, 4 or 5 women and you have a court that looks like the US' population.

Some would like 2 black, 1 Latino, 1 Asian, and one Native American because they somehow really think that there are more blacks than Latinos and in the next few minutes whites will be a minority. They live in a counter-factual world, sadly. That certainly is the demographic future of the US, if nothing else changes, even if a lot of whites don't like to admit it (then again, the higher non-white birthrate--really, the lower-education-level birthrate--also makes for a higher non-white poverty rate and lower wealth retention rate, since kids take money and a lot of it, and a lot of people don't like to admit that, either).

[jonestonesusa]

72. There's ambiguity in the numbers, of course

and as you probably know, race is a social identity rather than a biological one. Really, the term white has historically meant access to resources... Land, voting rights, the right to join a union, the right to be a resident alien. This is part of the reason why the census bureau distinguished between nonwhite and white Hispanics as our governing bodies decided who qualifies to get the goods.

We can quibble about the number in the categories, which are not as precise as you suggest, or we can acknowledge the underlying demographic trends that point towards an increasing population of people of color. Or we can change our deeply set national habits and respond proactively to the changing demographics of the American citizen. Needless to say, the Supreme Court is a long way from being representative of the whole population, especially in terms of region, religion, and college affiliations among the justices.

[rpannier]

17. That I disagree with

The Court is fine at 9
15 to 21 doesn't make it more efficient
And that's one thing the Supreme Court should be is efficient (along with several other things)

[Hortensis]

39. I'd have no problem with a majority. :)

I'm totally with you about the quality of justices. IMO, the best way to achieve representation for everyone is through appointing justices with the very best legal minds, characters, and open, accepting personalities.

I've never read speculation on enlarging the court. That sounds interesting. Every benefit has its costs, of course, but I have no idea what they might be.

[Nye Bevan]

5. Reminiscent of the "papist" attacks on JFK.

Too bad, I thought we'd moved beyond that kind of thing.

[Major Hogwash]

23. How so? How is what she said any different than what members of DU are saying . . .

. . . about diversity?

[Lucky Luciano]

25. I assume she is one if the Catholics.

[2naSalit]

6. Since the GP seems to have

a religion issue and require officials to have a religion in the first place, so we can use it to judge them, then we will have this as an issue. If there is little religious diversity on the bench, that could be a problem.

I think all she is saying is tat since we do look at religion as a qulaifier, for good or ill, there aren't enough voices being represented on the bench... she does include herself in that group btw.

[Califonz]

7. It's time for the SCOTUS to have its first Asian-American justice! And UCLA Law School grad!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_Nguyen

Go Bruins!

[rock]

9. And she really needs to be

a gay atheist!

[Lancero]

10. Said the Catholic.

[Cassiopeia]

12. Yeah, I was wondering when she was going to convert

to help alleviate that problem.

[Octafish]

11. Integrity.

A Catholic woman of Puerto Rican heritage wants the court to reflect the nation through religious diversity. She is no hypocrite, pulling up the ladder after getting into the tree house.

Brava!

[840high]

55. .that^

[Initech]

14. What the hell is diversity?

[PoliticAverse]

15. "everyone from an Ivy League school" - not just from "an Ivy League school"...

all the current Justices attended one of 2 schools: Harvard and Yale.

[LuckyLib]

16. And we've had more than our share of white male

Protestants since 1776 in governing positions.

[Eric J in MN]

18. Will she step down in the hopes of being replaced by a Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, or atheist?

In terms of rulings, having an atheist on the court might add perspective in certain cases. If we're not going to get an atheist on the court, then I don't think it matters if all the Justices are Catholic or Jewish.

[oberliner]

19. Did you change the headline of the article for some reason?

Clicking on the link provided yields the following headline:

Sotomayor: US High Court Needs More Diversity, in Many Ways

That headline is also indicated within the text of the link itself.

Can you explain why the title of your OP is different?

[Purveyor]

22. Uh nope. Eom

[oberliner]

31. Where did you get the "Too Many Catholics, Jews" headline from?

It is not found at the link you provided.

[Purveyor]

33. What difference does it make? eom

[Skittles]

57. WTF

what difference does it make? Did you make up that headline?

[Purveyor]

59. Another source with same title:

http://www.breakingisraelnews.com/65314/sotomayor-too-many-catholics-jews-supreme-court-jewish-world/#xxOdqdcv0Xofbrhf.97

[Skittles]

64. well post THAT source then

[Purveyor]

70. No.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

20. I want an atheist.

[greiner3]

26. Choose me. Choose me

[callous taoboy]

24. Would love love love to see an atheist on the S.C. Never going to happen.

[Hekate]

45. Probably has been so in the past, before the days when a religious test started being applied...

...to public offices in the US. Back when the entire SCOTUS was entirely white, male, and Protestant, it wasn't a "thing" to publicly question someone's beliefs the way it has become so today. White male? Check. Not a Jew? Check. Not a Papist? Check. Born a Methodist? Sure, and why go into details?

This whole business of ginning up social conservatives to poke their noses into peoples' private relationship with God (or not) was part of the late 20th Century GOP's power grab with people they thought of as useful. Evangelicals historically stayed out of politics (too dirty, too much of this world) and concentrated on the next world.

[mckara]

29. I Don't Know? The Protestants Brought Us that Work Ethic Thing

And that has been used by the wealthy to keep the rest of us working hard for not much money and trying to make us feel guilty for getting government benefits. I can't imagine where we would be, if they ever got a majority!

[TipTok]

35. I could go for a staunch Atheist...

[Lucky Luciano]

41. Yup. About time for that. nt

[Hekate]

43. All from the Ivy League, too. She knows there are other great law schools in the nation....

UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Chicago all spring to mind. There's also UCLA and University of Southern California.

Getting their collective minds out of the East Coast bubble would be good for the SCOTUS and good for the country. Thank you Justice Sotomayor.

[oberliner]

46. Two of the justices are from California and attended Stanford (Kennedy and Breyer)

Kennedy was also a professor at University of the Pacific for over 20 years (in Stockton).

He is definitely someone who is from outside of the East Coast bubble.

[Hekate]

47. Need another two; how's that?

[JRLeft]

44. How about an atheist from a public school.

[Hekate]

48. University of California is definitely a "public school."

[JRLeft]

49. UC Berkeley is not far from me.

[Brother Buzz]

54. UCB's law school, Boalt, is infected with the likes of John Yoo

The genuine free-thinking atheists traditionally come from UC's oldest and original stand alone law school, Hastings over in 'The City'.

[Hekate]

61. He's only one person, albeit a cockroach

[villager]

51. She's right about the Ivy League schools aspect.

Tired of the self-entitled tassel-loafered Beltway set dragging down the nation with their blinders.

[mwrguy]

52. A Muslim on the court would be great

[northernsouthern]

53. Diversity?

How about a few Native Americans...it only seems fair, and perhaps a Buddhist? And some more ladies. I would also like an Atheist or agnostic.

[JI7]

58. headline is misleading, she is calling for greater diversity in many areas

from religiouos background to education . her point would include having a jewish/catholic person who went to a public state school also. or an atheist who went to ivy league.

she has a great point but the headline just takes away from it.

[sadoldgirl]

60. On the other hand I certainly would detest to

see a devout evangelical on the court, but i would
be happy about a Buddhist.

[LeftishBrit]

65. The thing is, religion should not be relevant to decision-making on the Supreme Court

IMO it doesn't much matter whether different religions are equally represented on a top court. What does matter, is that judges should not make their legal decisions on the basis of any religion.

I certainly think that judges should have diversity of experience, both personal and legal. Most of our High Court Judges are upper-middle-class men, often from legal families.

[Scuba]

66. Agreed, and really wish Obama had nominated a gay atheist.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

67. Replace them all with a Super Computer, just feed in both sides of the argument,

and it would spit out a decision in seconds, you save time and don't have to worry about nuts like $calia?

[Javaman]

69. I dream of a day when they are all atheists. nt

[itcfish]

71. In My Opinion

they are atheists they just can't admit that publically. I doubt many politicians actually believe in God. IMO