Unforeseen Contingencies

By the indications I've seen, Sonia Sotomayor is a bad nominee for the Supreme Court. It doesn't appear that she understands the law as protecting individual rights; the Ricci and the Didden decisions seem to make that clear. But this post isn't about that; I will leave law professor Richard Epstein (and here) and columnist George Will to make this case.

But what are we to make of a nomination in which the primary rationale for selection seems to be her sex, ethnicity, and "life story?" Yesterday NPR's Mara Liasson repeatedly termed Sotomayor "bulletproof." And ABC’s Jan Greenburg confirms that this was indeed Obama's rationale.

Fine: a slick move on the part of a savvy political operator. But I note that Sotomayor has explicitly stated that her sex and ethnicity make her more qualified to rule on law than if she were a white male - this in response to a claim by Sandra Day O'Connor that one’s wisdom, not one's "identity," is the proper basis for making legal rulings.

I don’t know whether Sotomayor is actually racist and sexist - although I would certainly understand if fireman Frank Ricci believes he could not get a fair hearing in her court.

I do know that if a white man were to say that his race and sex made him more qualified to make legal decisions than someone who hasn’t had "the richness" of a white male’s experiences, he'd be immediately disqualified as a racist and sexist, and publicly destroyed by the "progressives." That they find Sotomayor’s comment acceptable, even cute, betrays their own hypocrisy, as well as their own racism and sexism. They've elevated politically correct racism and sexism to a "principle."

And unfortunately, progressive racism and sexism is increasingly becoming the law of the land.

See Volokh Conspiracy for intelligent and even-handed analysis of Sotomayor herself.

Photo: Fireman Frank Ricci, from the text Firefighter's Handbook, to which he's a contributor.