Justice Brett Kavanaugh is accustomed to unrelenting personal attacks from the left that began with his nomination to the Court. This week, however, the ad hominem insults came not from cable programs but a colleague. Justice Sonia Sotomayor used an appearance at the University of Kansas School of Law to level a personal dig at Kavanaugh as an out-of-touch elitist.
I have long criticized the growing number of public statements by justices on controversial subjects and cases, including Justice Sotomayor. However, this appearance represented a new low in lashing out at a colleague as effectively blinded by his own privilege.
In her comments, Sotomayor raised Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo:
“I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops. This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour… Those hours that they took you away, nobody’s paying that person. And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper…”
She then referred to her own background as giving her experience and knowledge that is apparently missing in colleagues such as Kavanaugh:
“Life experiences teach you to think more broadly and to see things others may not. And when I have a moment where I can express that on behalf of people who have no other voice, then I’m being given a very rare privilege.”
It was reminiscent of Sotomayor’s reference to being a “wise Latina” on the bench. While on the Second Circuit, then-judge Sotomayor explained that her life experiences offered a “difference” not shared by other colleagues. In a 2001 lecture at Berkeley law school titled “A Latina Judge’s Voice,” she heralded the difference that “our gender and national origins may and will make … in our judging.”
In her latest comments, she is suggesting that her interaction with hourly wage earners allows her to see things that Kavanaugh does not in these cases. The claim that she “sees things that others may not” suggests that the privileged, insulated existence of Kavanaugh blinds him to the true merits of cases before him.
Notably, Justice Sotomayor also told the students and faculty that she has a friendship with most, but apparently not all, of her colleagues:
“I dare say that with virtually all of them, I certainly have a civil relationship. And with many of them, I think I dare say that I have a friendship,”
After this speech, I would not expect a social media friend invite from Kavanaugh.
It is true that Kavanaugh went to elite schools, but so did Sotomayor, who graduated from Princeton and Yale.
Both of Kavanaugh’s parents were indeed lawyers, but it is odd that Sotomayor would miss the compelling story of his mother, Martha. She was a history professor who went to law school while raising a family and eventually became one of the minority of women on the state bench. That would also seem to be “gender origins” that Sotomayor previously cited as key in her view of impactful judging.
However, what was most striking was Sotomayor’s backhanded suggestion that Kavanaugh “doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.” The suggestion is that he has avoided — and continues to avoid — interactions with people who get paid on an hourly basis — while she is more inclusive in her circle of friends. It is obviously false, but more importantly, petty and unfair.
The attack suggests that, while she is a “wise Latina,” Kavanaugh is a privileged prig on the Court. The fact is that many blue-collar (if not most) workers identify more with aspects of Kavanaugh’s jurisprudence. At a minimum, over half of the country is more likely to embrace his approach than that of Justice Sotomayor, who has been criticized for her comments in oral argument on issues ranging from abortion to puberty blockers to COVID restrictions.
Justice Kavanaugh has distinguished himself in public service, including work with the homeless.
Justice Sotomayor has repeatedly raised eyebrows with her comments off the bench, including seemingly calling on lawyers and students to join in a political campaign to change abortion laws.
In her favor, Justice Sotomayor has also defended colleagues like Justice Clarence Thomas, explained the reasonable disagreements among the justices, and opposed rationales on the left for packing the court. She is not someone who I view as gratuitously rude or cruel. I believe that she values collegiality and the Court as an institution. However, this was another injudicious moment during public events.
There is a wide chasm between the jurisprudence of these two justices. However, that difference is due to fundamental and principled differences in how courts should approach constitutional and statutory interpretation.
Yet, these comments were a disturbing departure from the tradition of collegiality and civility on the court. It was unfair and unwarranted. Hopefully, Justice Sotomayor will take an upcoming occasion during her speaking tour to withdraw the comment.
That would be the “wise” thing to do.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
Judge Sonia Sotomayor rejected an appeal from Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. The 1997 appeal was dismissed due to a procedural error—the paperwork was four days late—despite his lawyer’s claim of relying on a court clerk’s misinformation
Despite Sotomayor’s rhetoric, her ruling in my case showed a callous disregard for the real-life implications of her rulings. She opted for procedure over fairness and finality of conviction over accuracy. Many of the victims of wrongful convictions serving long sentences had exhausted their appeals long before they were exonerated. In how many of those cases did Sotomayor vote to refuse to even consider evidence of innocence?
In my case, Judge Sotomayor did not demonstrate that understanding. If that is her idea of “empathy,” a trait that Obama sought in his appointee, then God help us all, especially those who are wrongfully convicted and possibly sentenced to death. Innocence can never be ruled as out of order in court.
It is not about politics, nor race. It is about justice. Those of us concerned with wrongful convictions and justice should get the opportunity to verbalize our opposition to her confirmation.
Jeff is a lawyer today, seeking justice for all. Sotomayer is disgusting. She makes me and should make all of us sick.
In the federal system, isn’t the time deadline to file an appeal jurisdictional in nature, meaning the appellate court cannot grant extensions on an equitable basis? But still, if it’s true that the lateness was due to a court clerk’s error, then that is a recognized exception to timeliness. Was there any factual dispute about whether the court clerk in fact erred?
Read the case or ask Jeff.
oldmanfromkansas,
It was a failure by his lawyer in taking legal advice from a clerk. Far from the only one with a bad lawyer getting their clients dug in deeper. It’s a legal system with iron rules, not a justice system.
Kafkaesque!
Jeanine Pirro – On May 8, 2025, President Trump named her as the interim United States attorney for the District of Columbia
—
Westchester District Attorney Jeanine Pirro seized on the late petition, arguing that the court should dismiss my case without even considering my innocence claim. The court agreed. I then appealed my case to the 2nd Circuit. It was there that I first met Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
My lawyer gave three reasons why Judge Sotomayor and her colleague should overturn the procedural ruling: 1) Upholding such a ruling would cause a miscarriage of justice to continue; 2) Reversing the procedural ruling could open the door to more sophisticated DNA testing; 3) The late petition was not my fault or my attorney’s. To our dismay, Judge Sotomayor and her colleague refused to reverse the ruling. “The alleged reliance of Deskovic’s attorney on verbal misinformation from the court clerk constitutes excusable neglect that does not rise to the level of an extraordinary circumstance,” they wrote.
“Similarly, we are not persuaded that … his situation is unique and his petition has substantive merit.” A second appeal to Sotomayor’s court resulted in the same decision. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear my case, and I remained in prison for six more years.
https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2009/aug/15/judge-sonia-sotomayor-denied-my-appeal-and-i-spent-16-years-in-prison-for-a-crime-i-didnt-commit/
Pirro was the person who established the line that Jeffrey Deskovic should not be released. Trump likes her.
The Supreme Court does not represent a demographic; rather, it represents the Constitution. Everything the ‘wise Latina’ says about her ethnicity is antithetical to a stable Republic. If the justices were to abandon objective standards for subjective identity, we would have no anchor; the law would be like a ship unanchored in the open sea, adrift in whichever direction the prevailing wind was blowing.
Kavanaugh reminds me of Carter on ER.
Meyer – this gets at what I said below: Sotomayor, like most of the political Left in the US, views the judiciary as just another political branch of government. If they can’t get what they want through Congress, they turn to the courts to get it. Congress is better positioned to make these kinds of social policy decisions, as they can act proactively, conduct studies, and bring witnesses in on virtually any topic. They give a little, take a little, and reach compromises.
The Federalist Society model of judging is aligned with what the judiciary should be: a non-political branch that enforces the laws written by Congress based on the text of those laws, subject to any constitutional limitations, similarly based on the text and history of those constitutional provisions. The Federalist Society’s motto is that the judiciary should say what the law is, not what it should be – a reference to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78 (The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body).
What the judicial branch requires is disciplined, logical thinking, and scholarly excellence, not an ability to weigh competing social policy goals. Nothing Sotomayor cites as supporting her superior position over Kavanaugh has anything to do with logic or scholarliness. But that stands to reason because, as I just mentioned, she views it more akin to a legislative body.
The Federalist Society is who pays for lavish vacations to influence Justices. They are a shadow group of billionaires buying the results they want. Quoting Alexander Hamilton, slave holder, is to perfectly expose the underlying nature of the effort.
Ah, but the Constitution states that Congress “shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech,” while the judicial branch, the “Dictatorship of the Black-Robed Juristocracy,” arbitrarily rewrites that amendment to state that the speech that is defamation shall be abridged.
The Founders and Framers said, “People must adapt to freedom; freedom does not adapt to people. Dictatorship does.”
And so on, and so on, and so on.
Oh, shut up already. Defamation laws do NOT abridge the freedom of speech. Therefore they do not violate the first amendment.
“The Supreme Court represents the Constitution.”
Ah, but the Constitution states that Congress “shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech,” while the judicial branch, the “Dictatorship of the Black-Robed Juristocracy,” arbitrarily rewrites that amendment to state that the speech that is defamation shall be abridged.
The Founders and Framers said, “People must adapt to freedom; freedom does not adapt to people. Dictatorship does.”
Stop with this garbage. Defamation laws do NOT abridge the freedom of speech. None of the people who ratified the first amendment had any problem with defamation laws.
If that was entirely true then ChatGPT could replace them all. It was the conservatives who cut the anchor line by overturning Roe v. Wade by ignoring stare decisis. They should not have considered it as it was established precedent, but we are on a burn and maim path.
Another idiot heard from. Where in the constitution is stare decisis to be found? Roe v Wade was always a wrong decision, and 49 years of being wrong can’t make it right. Plessey lasted longer than Roe, but you have no objection to its having been overturned.
” It was the conservatives who cut the anchor line by overturning Roe v. Wade by ignoring stare decisis. They should not have considered it as it was established precedent, but we are on a burn and maim path.”
Thinking of a comment I made elsewhere about the education system and The Golden Thread, your lack of education of history and civics, leads you to substandard decision-making.
Another decision was overturned earlier, Dred Scott, so your absolute inhibition of overturning a prior Supreme Court decision describes your ignorance or a pathological commitment to dehumanization.
Just scratchin my head… what life experiences ( or lack of…) have to do with applying the law ?
Will John Roberts Tell Sotomayor, “There are no elitist judges, just judges!” Like he said to Trump?
“Will John Roberts Tell Sotomayor, “There are no elitist judges, just judges!” Like he said to Trump?”
That would require a backbone. The prevailing evidence appears to indicate that Roberts is an invertebrate.
OT
The gender-specific Moon Fly-By and Affirmative Action Tour is carrying DEI PASSENGERS, distinctly not predominant flyers and pilots.
The men who got America to the moon knew all about rocketry, flying, critical systems, and math and were self-reliant while all alone in the middle of nowhere and utterly adroit at crisis management.
This propaganda “Can’t we all just get along?” civil rights malarkey is a space sham.
It is a “fake” Kumbaya indoctrination campaign by incompetents and an inordinately expensive joke!
The reentry was a ball of fire ocean splash down with parachutes? 🤪.
Gosh, thought we used rockets, jets to slow us down and dock, board the shuttle and fly on down. We must be too busy with our genders and just how much can we steal to recall.
The shuttle didn’t fall back from 250,000 MILES, gaining kinetic energy the entire time.
Were the American Founders and Framers elitists?
Was the Preamble elitist?
_____________________________
“We the People of the United States…secure the Blessings of Liberty TO OURSELVES and OUR POSTERITY….”
– Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America
_____________________________________________________________________
Are you elitist? Are you “OURSELVES and OUR POSTERITY”?
Turley’s critique misses the mark because, frankly, Justice Sotomayor’s assessment of Kavanaugh isn’t wrong. At his confirmation, Kavanaugh’s combative and emotional performance—often described as a ‘blubbering mess’—suggested a temperament shaped by a lifetime of professional cushioning. While he may have matured on the bench, that initial display stood in stark contrast to Sotomayor’s grounded perspective.
Sotomayor’s diverse life experience provides a necessary edge in navigating legal nuance. While critics claim her peers stick to a strict originalist or textualist framework, those justices often inject their own biases when the logic doesn’t suit their preferred outcome.
For example, look at Justice Alito in Dobbs, where he leaned on historical traditions that conveniently excluded women’s autonomy, or Justice Thomas’s shifting application of the Second Amendment in cases like Bruen. In these instances, ‘originalism’ appears less like a neutral rule and more like a flexible tool used to reach a predetermined, partisan conclusion.
Her “diverse life experience provides a necessary edge in navigating legal nuance.” Are you insane? What does her “life experience” have to do with applying the laws and reading the constitution? You just outted yourself as a useful idiot, a woke buffoon repeating the marxist slop you were fed in school like a good dog.
I was going to comment as well but you’ve said it better. Useful idiot, indeed.
Now you’ve gone too far. Dogs are not like their owners, but in my case my “dog dad” is an incel idiot. True, he feeds me but I bake pies using my poop then feed it to him. He laps them right up!
Well said and much more concisely than I have tried to say the same thing.
Equal protection of the law REQUIRES blindness to all the things Sotomayor proudly anounces that she gives a great deal of weight to.
John Say, Wow, so we’re still pretending the ‘blindness’ thing isn’t just a convenient fairy tale? If ‘equal protection’ requires total sensory deprivation, someone should have told Justice Scalia.
He was the king of citing his own ‘life experience’ when it suited him. Whether it was his Catholic upbringing, his love for hunting, or his specific ‘traditional’ view of the American family, Scalia didn’t just read a dictionary—he filtered the law through his own very specific, very personal world view. When he wrote about ‘the moral heritage of our people’ or ‘the traditional family,’ he wasn’t quoting the Constitution; he was quoting his own life experience.
The only difference is that when a conservative Justice does it, it’s called ‘common sense’ or ‘tradition,’ but when Sotomayor does it, it’s suddenly a ‘threat to the law.’
It’s funny how ‘blindness’ is only mandatory when the perspective being added isn’t one you already agree with. Are we actually going to talk about judicial consistency, or are we just picking and choosing which Justices’ backgrounds we’re okay with?
Life experience and diversity are not the same thing
Not is empathy
Given you lack of specifics I can not comment on your claims regarding conservative justices
Regardless Scalia is not my hero
And as I have noted before conservatives sometimes make the same biased mistakes as left wing nuts
But there is a giant gulf between people who try to follow the requirements of the rule of law and those who just make things up based on their guts all the time
Blind justice is an aspiration not reality
But it is an aspiration we must strive towards
Failing is forgivable
Not trying I’d immoral
There are sins worse than unwitting hypocracy
You argue that there is a ‘giant gulf’ between those who follow the rule of law and those who follow their ‘guts,’ but this is a distinction without a difference.
Every judge—including those you admire—interprets the law through the lens of their own life experience. To claim that one side is ‘making things up’ while the other is merely ‘following requirements’ is a convenient way to delegitimize any interpretation you don’t like.
Furthermore, dismissing ‘unwitting hypocrisy’ as a minor sin is dangerous. When a judge is unwittingly biased, they lack the self-awareness to check their own power. Blind justice isn’t achieved by closing your eyes to your own perspective; it’s achieved by opening them to the diverse experiences that ensure the ‘rule of law’ applies to everyone, not just those who share the judge’s background.
In my case, Judge Sotomayor did not demonstrate that understanding. If that is her idea of “empathy,” a trait that Obama sought in his appointee, then God help us all, especially those who are wrongfully convicted and possibly sentenced to death. Innocence can never be ruled as out of order in court.
It is not about politics, nor race. It is about justice. Those of us concerned with wrongful convictions and justice should get the opportunity to verbalize our opposition to her confirmation.
Jeff is a lawyer today, seeking justice for all. Sotomayer is disgusting. She makes me and should make all of us sick.
Natasha is the south end of a north bound horse.
” Justice Sotomayor’s assessment of Kavanaugh isn’t wrong.”
And that is entirely irrelevant.
Sotomayor’s claim to fame – and her view from the remarks cited by Turley above is absolutely Wrong.
It is WRONG as a matter of the nececities for improvement of the human condition,
and it is WRONG because it is not at all the proper role for ANY judge.
Judges must be driven by the law and the constitution – and ONLY that.
If you can not follow the law and constitution when ruling where you do not like the outcome that will bring about – you should not be a judge.
Her idea of the role of the judge is the role of the people or the legislature – if it is even that – because frankly her approach is a massive moral hazard that degrades life for all of us,
Everything the left values is a LUXURY that we are afforded because we have a prosperous and growing society.
harm that and everything you think is a right or important goes away as growth declines.
I personally favor many many alternative approaches to justice as an example – but again they are LUXURIES
That only a wealthy society can afford.
The whole culture war rage of the left – goes away if prosperity goes away.
Gay rights, minority rights, personal pronouns, abortions, and on and on – all go away without prosperity.
Sotomayor and most of those of you on the left are clueless about that.
“At his confirmation, Kavanaugh’s combative and emotional performance”
That is what happens when the left turns things into a 3 ring circus.
The actual confirmation hearings – which went well, were essentially over – before the left through dog shite over the transom and turned the confirmation into a mess allowing idiotic and not credible allegations to flood the proocess.
IT is Sotomayor – who is explicitly the emotional mess – emotion is the foundation of her conception of the role of a justice, while if we want a system that works – emotion is something to be removed from the courts and government as a whole.
Everything Sotomayor values – is totally completely fine – in a charity or in thechoices of free individuals. It has absolutely no place at all in government – it is DESTRUCTIVE to society and it actually works to undermine the quality of life for all of us.
“Sotomayor’s diverse life experience provides a necessary edge in navigating legal nuance. ”
Not at all.
The role of a judge is the law and the constitution.
The results should be EXACTLY the same for all judges all the time. That is a hard standard to reach, but it i why intellect not empathy are critical.
You fixate on the 14th amendment – one of the hallmarks of the 14th amendment – though actually present in the original constitution, is Equalality before the law.
Sotomayor – and the left – particularly the modern left REQUIRE oinnequality before the law.
All of what Sotomayor thinks is wisdom is the destruction of equality before the law.
While equality before the law i sometimes more aspiration than reality – it is ABSOLUTELY the objective of our system,
And those of you on the left are the antithesis of that.
You are the modern Jim Crow – as ignorant and predjudiced as the southern racists of a century ago.
I have not seen evidence that Kavanaugh is a great justice – there are few of those.
But he is 100 times better than Sotomayor – who is not only in way over her head, but does not even understand that her own judicial approach is destructive
And you are too ignorant to grasp that – something that is actually pretty obvious,
“While critics claim her peers stick to a strict originalist or textualist framework, those justices often inject their own biases when the logic doesn’t suit their preferred outcome.”
Do any of the justices follow the core precepts of the law perfectly ? Absolutely not.
But most of those on the right actually TRY to. Sotomayor openly seeks an idiotic approach.
You do not seem to grasp that if Sotomayor’s approach is legitimate – then those justices on the right deciding cases not based on the constitution and the law, but on their own personal biases is perfectly legitimate.
I will be happy to entertain judicial and legal approaches from you that actually meet the requirements of equality before the law. Or at the very least try to.
Any approach to judicial decisions that does not if perfectly followed produce the same results no matter who the judge is and no matter when the case is being decided – so long as the case is being decided based on the same law and same constitution meets the requirements of equality before the law.
Any legal theory that does not produce the same outcome – given the same facts and the same law and constitution
violates equality before the law.
We can toloerate the inability to acheive perfect application given that the courts strive to follow a known standard that if correctly followed would produce the same results with the same facts and the same law andconstitution.
Are Alito and Thomas hypocrites ? Absolutely. But Sotomayor is just an ignorant bomb thrower who has no clue what she is doing.
“For example, look at Justice Alito in Dobbs, where he leaned on historical traditions that conveniently excluded women’s autonomy”
Are you saying that over the past several centuries womens anatomy has changed ?
What you are actually saying is that Alito did not take into account changing sexual attitudes.
That is actually impossible. But it is likely that he quite correctly tried to NOT take into account changing sexual attitudes.
If attitudes or even women’s anatomy have changed – Change the law or the constitution – and there is an excellent chance Alito will follow. While Sotomayor is going to follow her personal set of biases regardless of what changes we make to the law or constitution.
“Justice Thomas’s shifting application of the Second Amendment in cases like Bruen.”
How so ? The criteria that SCOTUS has correctly imposed on gun laws, which ALSO must apply to all laws,
is that they must comport with the application of the constitutional provisions at the time those constitutional provisions were enacted. For gun laws those are The ratification of the 2nd amendment and the later ratification of the 14th.
The priviledges and immunities clause of the 14th amendment served many purposes but ONE that was CLEAR in the discussions involved in creating and ratifying it was to assure that newly freed black former slaves would have the right to possess firearms for their protection against their former masters and other angry southern whites.
The 14th amendment was unequivocally intended to assure that the States had no power to pass laws making it difficult for newly freed blacks to defend themselves with firearms.
The actual examination of the 14th amendment and its purposes and history are the reason that drive SCOTUS in prior cases like Heller and McDonald.
Please explain to me how Any of the current left wing nut states efforts to restrict Guns do not run afoul of the clear intent of the framers and ratifiers of the 14th amendment to enshrine individual gun ownership possession and use as an inalianable right – not merely for freed blacks – but for everyone.
Those of you on the left keep trying to play games with the constitution – with bad examples of past laws that were NOT applied as you claimed – often you LIE about them and even if you are correct you would still be wrong.
The “traditions and past laws” with respect to firearms is NOT the precolonial or immediate post constitutional period – though usually left attempts to claim significant restrictions in those time periods FAIL.
Our founders were more inclined to REQUIRE males over the age of 16 to own guns than to restrict them.
The relevant period is reconstruction. And the relevant criteria is NOT – did states get away with passing restrictive gun laws, But Did congress in passing the 14th amendment, and the people in ratifying it explicityly intend to grant and inalienable right to firearms that States could not infringe on.
celebrated left civil rights decisions like Gideon or Miranda RELY on the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment to subject states to the bill of rights. But Heller Bruen and McDonald do not primarily rely on the equal protection clause to subject states to the bill of rights. They rely oin the privileges and immunities clause and the legislative history of the 14th amendment which explicityly sought to give EVERYONE the right to firearms (and many other rights) without interferance by the states.
Miranda relies on the judicial doctrine of incorporation – which is only a century old and his only been extended slowly to the bill of rights. While I think that the doctrine of incorporation is correct.
The 14th amendment restrictions on states ability to restrict firearms does NOT rest on the beleif that the framers of the 14th amendment intended to bind states to the bill of rights.
It relies on the explicity legislative and ratification history that the framers of the 14th amendment intentionally restricted a states right to restrict the individual right to firearms.
I have no idea how in the world you think Thomas going be hypocritical with respect to that.
” In these instances, ‘originalism’ appears less like a neutral rule and more like a flexible tool used to reach a predetermined, partisan conclusion.”
While I will agree that originalist justices are often hypocrits – your specific examples are REALLY examples of the bad logic of left wing nuts.
Women’s anatomy has not changed in hundreds of thousands of years.
The individual right to firearms and the prohibition against states restricting that rests on the 14th amenment and the explicit intention of its framers to assure that states could NOT interfere with the right of freed black slaves to defend themselves.
There is no hypocracy in either of these.
“If attitudes or even women’s anatomy have changed – Change the law or the constitution – and there is an excellent chance Alito will follow. While Sotomayor is going to follow her personal set of biases regardless of what changes we make to the law or constitution.”
If the whole comment is too long for some.
John Say, that’s a lot of words for to say very little.
You have it backward: civil rights aren’t ‘luxuries’ created by prosperity—they are the foundation of it. A society only becomes stable and prosperous because it protects the rights and equality of all its citizens. Suggesting that justice for minorities is a secondary ‘perk’ of wealth ignores the fact that a system that excludes people is inherently unstable and destructive.
Plus the idea of a ‘blind’ judge is a myth. All interpretation requires human judgment, and history shows that ‘neutrality’ is usually just the perspective of whoever is already in power. Acknowledging diverse life experiences isn’t ‘destroying’ equality; it’s the only way to ensure the law actually applies to everyone in reality, not just in a textbook.
X
Actually even civil rights are luxuries
Please identify anywhere in the world prior to the modern era where most people had civil rights ?
But that is not what I said
I said the idiotic things left wing nuts like you call rights are actually the luxuries of prosperity
Most of the world has universal healthcare
No nation without a high standard of living provides more than very basic healthcare whether privately or through government
It is not an accident that what today is accepted as normal was deviant for hundreds of thousands of years
When a people can not reproduce sustainably non reproductive sexual conduct is a threat to survival
In the past we needed many children to deal with high mortality
But you should br concerned that low birth rates in modern countries will result in reversion to the same condemnation even criminalization of non reproductive sexuality
We are seeing lots of nations trying to use the carrot to improve birth rates
In left wing societies where actual rights are not anchored to individuals and nature
Where rights are believed to be a creation of government the same left wing governments can take them away for the good of society
Regardless our founders did not talk of civil rights
They talked of god given natural rights
These derive from the fact that humans have free will and infringing on the free will of another human except in response to actual harm is immoral
Actual civil rights
Like voting come from government
Those are not necessary if government never infringes on natural rights
John Say, you’re trying to have it both ways. You claim rights are ‘God-given natural rights’ based on ‘free will,’ yet you argue they are ‘luxuries’ that can be stripped away if the birth rate drops or the economy dips. Which is it? If a right is inherent to our nature, it doesn’t become ‘deviant’ or ‘immoral’ just because a society is struggling to reproduce.
Furthermore, your distinction between natural and civil rights is a fantasy. Natural rights are meaningless without the civil rights (like voting) that protect them. To say civil rights are ‘not necessary’ is to invite the very government overreach you claim to fear.
You’ve constructed a philosophy where rights only exist when they are convenient for ‘survival,’ which is the exact opposite of the ‘inalienable’ principles the Founders actually stood for.
You are clearly ignorant of history
First until the modern era virtually all societies had very little diversity
Even today diversity is the exception not the rule
95% of Chinese are Hahn Chinese
Yet from the death of mao to the ascendency of xi china the Chinese standard of living rose exponentially
Are you going to argue tha was a consequence of diversity or minority rights ?
In the distant past most diversity in Greece Syria Egypt Rome meant slavery is that your idea of respect for minority rights ?
In the us the most rapid increase in standard of living occurred in the 19th century when the us was driving native americans from their land
The Industrial Revolution and its improvement in standard of living came before the end to slavery
It also came before most of the mass immigration from Europe to the us
Diversity is a value
It is not a principle
It is a net positive value in already prosperous societies
But it is net positive not all positive
A major factor in trumps election and re election was the negative impacts of mass immigration – even recent immigrants opposed chaotic mass immigration
You can argue and probably are correct that the good outweighs the bad
But you can not argue that diversity comes with no downside
Again diversity
And all the faux rights of the left are luxuries that a prosperous society can afford
One of the driving forces for fascism in Germany Italy even the us was the post wwi and Great Depression decline in standard of living
Germans blamed it on Jews
But fascism appealed to many in the 20s in Europe and 30s in the us because diversity is a luxury value of a prosperous society
Destroy the prosperity and people return to much earlier values
I have specifically addressed diversity
But pretty much all left wing values are luxuries not rights
If you doubt that try living in a society with a lower standard of living
Or if as is possible in the us and has happened elsewhere
Destroy standard of living and
You will see even leftists throw their most sacred values on the fire
Or you could remember mallows heirarcht of needs from us or college freshmen psychology
You are arguing against facts reality and history
John Say, you’re arguing that rights and diversity are ‘luxuries’ of the rich, but history shows they are actually the foundations of prosperity. You cite China’s homogeneity, but ignore that their growth only happened when they opened up to a diverse global market. You cite the 19th-century US, but ignore that a society built on exclusion eventually collapsed into a Civil War.
To call diversity a ‘luxury’ is to fundamentally misunderstand economics. Diversity is an engine of innovation, not a tax on it. Furthermore, your argument that fascism is a natural reaction to economic decline is dangerous. Scapegoating minorities isn’t a ‘return to values’; it’s a political failure. Rights aren’t what we ‘buy’ when we have money; they are the tools we use to build a society where people can actually get fed, stay safe, and prosper.
That is too hyperbolic to take seriously. Justify an assertion with another assertion instead of saying that you disagree.
180 million voters and “often described” should be taken as factual evidence that Kavanagh is unsuitable? It’s agitprop.
So is the rest. None of the judges are elected law makers. Never should they play games to interpret the Constitution as if Congress made a law that they wanted. Elect people who represent their constituents. The judges represent the law. Ignorant of everything but the law is ideal.
Sotomayor was a failure as a wife, per her own admission. She literally ignored her spouse of less than 7 years. She has no experience in raising children, a family, caring for her household and extended family, and the pressures therein. She is in the end self-absorbed. Marriage means marrying your cross. She literally has no standing in addressing a towering Catholic who has been a husband of >20 years, raised children with his spouse, and is actively involved in lay ministry to those in his midst. Sotomayor is a bitter woman with hubris who talks her talk, aka a Democrat. Kavanaugh walks the talk. Then there is Ben Sasse: wisdom from a righteous, holy, dying man.
Estovir, since when does family life have any bearing on a judge’s standing??
Trump was accused of raping Ivana, his fist wife. And Trump was having his affair with Stormy Daniels while Melania was pregnant with Barron. If family life means anything, Trump should never have gotten the Republican nomination!
but knowing someone who gets paid by the hour does…? Tripe!
I suggest Sotomayor had mental problems and should be no where near the bench. Her job is to decide in a non partisan way Constitutionality.Yet she had publicly announced she cried when ‘her side’ doesn’t win.(she means is in the minority on.a decision).
In her position that indicates a mental problem.
Yeah, Anonymous, there shouldn’t be any Hispanics on the court. But she put there by Obama, another non-White.
You seem to have a habit of straw-manning everyone. Your usual audience may be dull enough to fall for it, but most people here recognize it, and know it is an illegitimate form of argumentation.
Old Man, the straw man is this stupid, racist crap where White people should be deeply worried about the ‘replacement theory’.
Kavanaugh’s opinion gives license to profiling Hispanics. Would White people tolerate an opinion like that if it affected them??? ..No.!!!
These days police profile everyone especially white leftist.
They are the people that need to be profiled the most … them and the trannies. Seems to me they’re the ones committing all the crimes.
I have heard of this “replacement theory” at the fringes. I have never considerd it to have any real relevance to the effort to secure the borders and deport violent illegal aliens. Those two things are fundamental for a nation to exist at all, and so they don’t depend on some whacko wing-nut theory for legitimacy.
It doesn’t have any relevance. Now, the democrats ‘replacement voter theory’ has legs. Why do you think the lefties are so adamant about not deporting anyone – especially the violent illegal aliens? Why, that’s there future voting base don’t you know….
You’ll be ecstatic when Americans are on the reservation, right?
America is almost there now; it just needs a little more public assistance, affirmative action, quotas, forced busing, public housing, Obongocare, Medicaid, CalFresh, WIC, SNAP, TANF, HAMP, HARP, HUD, etc., ad infinitum, ad plenam dominationem.
It’s actually white flight. They’re protestants. Replacement theory is a cover. Someone has to live here?
Toto, do you “live in Kansas anymore,” or do you live in the Turley Blog? Geez!
What, you don’t appreciate all of my keen insights, wink wink 😘 ☺️😉
What’s not to appreciate, Mr. Know-It-All?
How’s that feel, by the way—all that “knowledge” up there in your head?
If “life experiences”, rather that an understanding of laws and their intent, were a requirement for judges and Justices, then why is Justice Sotomayor not supporting convicted criminals, murderers, child molesters, and illegal aliens for judgeships? Who can best understand the implications of a judge-imposed sentence other than a convicted criminal?
And those criminals may have dependents who need to be fed. If we put them in prison, their dependents will suffer. Ergo, nobody who has dependents should ever go to prison.
Professor Turley’s dismissal of Sotomayor’s comments as ‘petty’ actually proves her point. Turley is writing from a position of extreme academic and social privilege—one where a debate over ‘hourly wages’ is a theoretical exercise rather than a memory of a hungry night.
Because Turley has spent his career in the same elite legal circles as Justice Kavanaugh, he views their shared perspective as the ‘neutral’ default. He labels any deviation from that perspective as ‘identity politics’ or ‘lashing out.’ This is a classic privileged blind spot: when your life experience is the status quo, you don’t see it as a ‘filter’ at all—you just call it ‘the law.’
Sotomayor isn’t being ‘injudicious’; she is pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes—or, in this case, that the Umpire has no idea how much the tickets cost.
Turley’s inability to see the difference between a ‘personal dig’ and a ‘sociological reality’ confirms exactly why the Court needs voices that aren’t insulated by the Ivy-League-to-Chambers pipeline.
And the majority of dimwits on the blog can’t see that because they are too busy bashing the Justice because of ignorance, bigotry, and racist animosity. Truly sad.
Well you see, X, people in low wage jobs are losers. And losers shouldn’t mind being hassled by Federal agents. That’s what Turley’s trying to say.
Bull Wax!
The understanding that human behavior is ‘learned’, is essential to understanding human behavior. The rich and famous have always had a leg up. .. movie stars, swimming pools and everything.
Not too many on this ‘blog’, much less Kavanaugh, would have made it in my neck of the woods – the dark and bloody hunting grounds of central Appalachia.
Trump, himself, acting like that, would have wound up fish-bait for tadpoles. Think ‘Deliverance’ .. .
The “wouldn’t have made it in my neck of the woods” type of argument is very weak. Perhaps you wouldn’t have made it in the cut-throat NYC real-estate market.
People generally become good at what their surroundings require for survival. An diesel mechanic can sneer at a fisherman for knowing little about trucks and buses, and the fisherman can sneer back at the mechanic fore not being a fishing expert. So what?
Settle down, granny. Perhaps instead of keyboard warrioring, you can become a justice.
Sotomayor’s attacks on Kavanaugh are petty and have no place within the judicial system – but they are increasingly the norm – brought on by the left.
But worse her defense of her own legal philosophy is why she is nto competent to be a judge.
The courts are supposed to decide cases based on the facts, the law and the constitution.
Personal experience or lack thereof has nothing to do with it.
Sotomayor does Not have the life experiences of Kavanaugh either – does that disqualify her ?
What disqualifies ANY judge is the beleif that their life experiences matter.
The facts the law the constitution – that is it.
Getting that right – as you have noted is difficult enough.
Sotomayor makes things worse not better.
Changing the law and the constitution are the role of the people and congress – not the courts – and not the president.
I expect Trump to lose the Birthright citizenship case for exactly that reason – the president is to Follow the law and constitution – not write the law and constitution.
You are not free to murder others if you are wealthy and priviledged and hungry.
You are not free to murder others if you are poor and despised and hungry.
Justice is supposed to be blind to your circumstances.
There is no logical or moral difference between Sotomayor tipping the scales to favor hourly wage earners and Kavanaugh doing so to favor white priviledged elites.
The way to end special treatment is to end special treatment – Not to create new groups to give special treatment to.
And yes that is “identity politics’ and it is vile.
“Sotomayor isn’t being ‘injudicious’; she is pointing out that the Emperor has no clothes—or, in this case, that the Umpire has no idea how much the tickets cost.”
If only that were true. Sotomayor may be taking a jab at Kavanaughs priviledge – fair enough,
there is no doubt that fo far to long our system has given some preferential treatment.
But Sotomayor does not end there – she explicitly and has forever claimed that instead of priviledge blind justice we should change who is priviledged.
BTW What has theprice of the ticket to a ball game got to do with wether a pitch was a ball or a strike ?
Your own example ruins your argument.
“Turley’s inability to see the difference between a ‘personal dig’ and a ‘sociological reality’”
Neither are relevant to the duty of the court.
“confirms exactly why the Court needs voices that aren’t insulated by the Ivy-League-to-Chambers pipeline.”
No the court needs justices who follow he law and constitution – not advocates for ANY cause.
“And the majority of dimwits on the blog can’t see that because they are too busy bashing the Justice because of ignorance, bigotry, and racist animosity. Truly sad.”
The majority on this blog understand that you do not fix inequality before the law by creating new legal priviledge classes.
John Say, The ‘ball and strike’ analogy is exactly why you’re missing the point. If an umpire has never seen a curveball because they were only trained on straight pitches in an Ivy League vacuum, they’re going to miscall the game. Sotomayor isn’t asking to ‘change who is privileged’; she’s pointing out that if the ‘rules’ are written and applied by people who have no idea how the rest of the world lives, the game is rigged before it even starts.
You admit that Alito and Thomas are ‘hypocrites’ who twist the law to fit their biases, yet you still argue for a ‘blind’ system that clearly doesn’t exist. Calling for a Justice to understand the ‘sociological reality’ of the people they rule over isn’t ‘vile identity politics’—it’s the only way to ensure the law is actually grounded in reality instead of being a weapon for whoever can best manipulate an 18th-century dictionary.
They judge on where the ball ends up. Same rules in Ivy League. You don’t want a Hispanic raised by blue collar parents calling “ball” because throwing a curveball at a hispanic is white supremacy.
Birthright and Ark is legislation from the bench. We’ll see if this court has the courage to correct it, JS.
John, I’m with you 90% of the time (when I have the time to read your lengthy rambles) but:
“I expect Trump to lose the Birthright citizenship case for exactly that reason – the president is to Follow the law and constitution – not write the law and constitution.”
I also expect him to lose that case but I think the arguments that he is right on the law and the Constitution should prevail. He will lose only because he is Trump. Probably 7-2. And IMHO his appearing in the audience at the argument cemented his loss. The 3 Leftist Ladies will, of course, vote against anything Trump favors, no matter what. The political weather-vane of a Chief Justice will join them because he reads the New York Times and because by joining the majority he gets to write the opinion and not one of the 3 Leftist ladies. Justice Barrett is in the Chief’s sphere of influence so she will make it 5 to affirm. The Chief Justice will write the opinion so that it is incomprehensible and allows Congress to change the rules rather than a new Constitutional Amendment. Thomas and Alito can read the legislative history and the obvious original intent of the 14th Amendment to apply only to the newly-freed slaves and will dissent. Gorsuch (and probably) Kavanaugh will make it 7-2 but will write a separate opinion saying that to overturn 150 years of traditional interpretation, even though unwarranted and never before directly decided by the Supreme Court, is too complicated and needs to be “clarified” by Congress.
Suddenly, to do a complicated job requires blue collar experience and not a good education because that is privileged.
Your elected representative in Congress should have a good balance of understanding, intelligence, education and pragmatism to give the majority what it wants without unintended consequences.
The Supreme court is important for the latter, but the Constitution and not their upbringing shapes their opinion.
I’m afraid that Justice Sotomayor is displaying muddled thinking – regardless of one’s opinion of the decision. That is the kindest conclusion that one can reach. “Sotomayor said Tuesday she wrote her dissent “not as a Latina who’s insulted,” but to try to convince Kavanaugh he was upending decades of court precedent. “I was not talking as a Latino justice,” she said. “I was talking about a justice who respects precedent. And I was explaining why that precedent is being violated.”” If that is true, then why did the good justice engage in the effort to disparage Justice Kavanaugh’s background which has no logical connection to any legal precedence being violated: “This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.” That swipe doesn’t strike me as an effort to explain precedence. Most charitable, this is muddled thinking.
I think that the general judicial outlook of many (perhaps most) of the justices on the Supreme Court is that they should reserve policy making to the legislative and executive branches. (Justices Sotomayor, Jackson, and largely Kagan are the clear exceptions.) This principled judicial restraint is not easy considering the temptation to make policy from the bench for the “good of the people”.
As far as the case at hand, one aspect that seems missing in the general debate is a recognition of the agency that the illegal aliens have. There is an easy, not cost, self deportation mechanism available. That many do not avail themselves of this opportunity but seeming bet on the probability of not being caught is the responsibility of the illegal aliens. And yes as with any other crime justice investigation approaches, there are mistaken identities, false leads, all of which the system attempts to filter out. Is it perfect and harmless to all not involved? No because we live in a human designed system and world.
What happened to “Justice is Blind” – that ideal that every court is supposed to strive for where each case is focused solely on the facts & evidence so that all citizens are treated equally regardless of wealth, status, race, gender, or background?
The fundamental question that everything else springs from: is the judiciary just another political branch, like the legislative and executive.
Kavanaugh: No.
Sotomayor: Yes.
That is a fundamental misreading of both Justices. Neither believes the Court is a political branch, but they disagree on what makes it legitimate.
For Kavanaugh, legitimacy comes from ‘formalism’—treating the law like a math equation where the judge is a neutral umpire. But the retort to that is: if the ‘umpire’ has only ever lived in a world of private schools and elite law firms, they might not even realize they are calling ‘strikes’ on rules that don’t exist for the average worker.
For Sotomayor, the Court stays non-political only when it is transparent about its impact. She isn’t saying ‘let’s be politicians’; she’s saying ‘let’s stop pretending our elite bubbles don’t affect our perspective.’
When she critiques a ruling for ignoring the ‘cold supper’ of an hourly worker, she isn’t being a politician—she’s being a realist. She’s arguing that ‘merit’ in a judge includes the wisdom to see how a ‘temporary stop’ in a legal brief is a ‘lost week of groceries’ in the real world.
If the Court only reflects the lived experience of one social class, it doesn’t become ‘neutral’—it becomes insulated. Sotomayor’s goal isn’t to politicize the bench, but to prevent it from becoming an echo chamber for the privileged.
@X
X is a troll, and some of us have been here for years and recognize X as other posters over time. By all means share, that’s your right, but don’t think anyone believes you. We don’t. We vote accordingly.
James – I no longer read X. X has lied, obfuscated, and displayed rank ignorance. X knows little about the law, but pretends to know more than a lawyer with 30 years’ experience. Yesterday, when X responded to a comment of mine, he said that Title IX doesn’t prohibit discrimination against men because men don’t feel uncomfortable around women. When I asked what part of Title IX makes its applicability depend on someone’s feelings, X criticized me for falsely stating it depends on feelings. X refused to admit that X was the one who had said that. It was all there in black and white, but X refused to acknowledge it, and the X responded with a condescending “sigh.”
When discussing the Kelo v. City of New London case, X falsely stated that the US Supreme Court dissenters agreed with the majority that the Takings Clause allows private property to be taken and given to private developers, but they wanted more evidence. I pointed out that that described the dissenters on the Connecticut Supreme Court, whereas the dissenters on the US Supreme Court had said just the opposite. Still, X refused to confess error.
When discussing the role of the judiciary, and the Marbury v. Madison ruling that it is the province of the judicial department to say what the law is – meaning the judiciary declares the law’s meaning (after interpreting the text of course) – X said I was all wet because the judiciary inteprets the law but never declares the law. So X presumed to know more than Chief Justice Marshall about that. When I pointed out the Marbury quote, X refused to confess error.
In sum, I find that reading anything written by X is a waste of time. Everything X writes is garbage. Most likely, X is a repackaged Svelaz.
OldManFromKS,
Well said and spot on!
Just scroll past. Not worth reading.
Upstate, Stop acting like a kid behind his dad’s legs and start making a real argument. At least others are making an effort to make an argument or at a minimum offer a rebuttal.
“Well said and spot on” seems like using the turn signal on your car reflexively as your response.
george
Upstate, Stop acting like a kid behind his dad’s legs and start making a real argument. At least others are making an effort to make an argument or at a minimum offer a rebuttal.
___________________________
Which you do ALL the time george.
But the way. You claimed I used the 787-8 in my comments about AF1. I went back into the comments for the entire week. I found no such posting..
Still lying as always george.
No lie Dustoff. You did mention a 787-8. Darren deleted the whole thread because it was off topic.
How do I “hide behind daddy’s legs” all the time Dustoff? You have presented zero examples.
Oldmanfromkansas,
Your long-winded replies contradict your claim that my posts are a ‘waste of time.’ You’re hung up on a distinction without a difference regarding Marbury v. Madison, and you completely missed the context of the local court’s role in the Kelo case.
This highlights the real problem: a lack of reading comprehension. It’s clear that many posters here struggle to follow a basic discussion.
When you lose track of who said what, you fill in the gaps with false accusations against me. If you want to have a real debate about the facts, you first have to be able to read and understand them accurately.
george
Your long-winded replies
OMG… Look who talking.
James,
You haven’t proven me wrong on a single fact. Complaining about my posts instead of showing where I’m incorrect just proves that my points are hard to argue with.
I don’t write this for people who refuse to learn. I write for the quiet readers who actually want to hear both sides.
It’s sad that so many people would rather get angry than have a real conversation. It’s easy to attack what you don’t understand, but it’s much harder to actually do the work and discuss the facts.
“I don’t write this for people who refuse to learn. I write for the quiet readers who actually want to hear both sides.”
OMG!
ROFL!
(or as X tried to say when he first learned and tried to copy the acronym, ROLF!
Some day’s that Foot just can’t help itself; it just flies into your mouth. Gulp: did I really say that!
I’ve noticed as people get older it’s harder to remember that ‘silence is golden’ in certain circumstances’, and to defer and hold your peace on personal opinions of others, whether positive or not.
Justice Brown and her subjective feelings are just more ad nauseam drivel from an over-educated under- learned Judge.
Experience has shown me that equating living experiences is a fool’s game, elevated or lowered makes no difference if one is liked or disliked, or when one is asked to interpret law, unless of course you’re a supposed disadvantaged requesting recognition.
GW Writes:
“I’ve noticed as people get older it’s harder to remember that ‘silence is golden’”.
………………………….
Donald Trump proves this point multiple times per day.
I don’t care a fig for the life experiences of the person set over me as a judge. I would like for that person to follow the law.
Foolish Latina.
Yeah, Old Man, why are Hispanics in our country??
Anonymous – I love Latinos and the Spanish language. I love that there are many in the United States. I’ve lived in Latin America.
But like with every other population, some are wise and some are foolish. This one happens to be foolish, while proclaiming herself wise. As the proverb says: Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him.
Old Man, Trump’s entire deportation push is all based on getting rid of Hispanics.
No, it’s getting rid of illegal aliens, especially the most violent ones, who have killed, raped, raped children, and engaged in sex trafficking and drug trafficking. Some of the people being deported are Hispanics, but some are also Middle-Eastern and other nationalities.
I favor legal immigration, but I disfavor illegal immigration. And I especially disfavor illegal immigration where the person commits violent crimes against innocent Americans. Does that make me an outlier? Perhaps it would make me an outlier in your political party.
OldManFromKS,
Great comment!
Thanks Upstate. This anonymous commenter just used the same straw-man technique against another commenter above. As I noted in response, their usual audience may be dull enough to fall for it, but people here see through it.
There’s very little “immigration” happening. There’s permanent residency maintaining allegiance to a foreign power and the visitor’s children claim birthright. “Immigration” requires naturalization, allegiance as an oath and other conditions. In the permanent residents scheme no takes an oath of allegiance through generations.
Are you always this slow?
Oldman– Nice remark about Latinos. It got me thinking about those I know and realized I don’t think of them so much as ‘Latinos’ a category, they are nearly ubiquitous so that is too tiresome, but instead as friends, friendly associates or others, like I regard people with Italian or German or other European origin…in other words, as people. For a few months living in California my neighbors were a couple of Mexican origin and Gloria would sometimes share her truly excellent food with us. She was a little reluctant to go to Tijuana so when I was going she asked if I would get a genuine mocajete for her so of course I did. When I gave it to her she beamed and exclaimed “Now I feel like a real Mexican!” That made me very happy for her and I was pleased to see the pride in her heritage. We were still friends and neighbors. One of the things the Left seems to be trying to do is destroy our pride in who we are and pit us against each other. But a special target of their acidic corrosion is Western Civilization itself.
Lawyers work by the hour. Just sayin’.
“And when I have a moment where I can express that on behalf of people” I would think she doesn’t know why she is a Justice! She is supposed to rule according to the CONSTITUTION and not on behave of the people people before her!! I see this as a MAJOR problem with the court they are trying to NORMALIZE finding in the trend of things instead of the actual meaning of the CONSTITUTION!!! Just more confusion so more TAX money can be spent litigating the made up definitions of the CONSTITUTION!!!
I read an article in USA Today in which Justice Sotomayor admitted that she was not as qualified as the other people who were being considered for a Supreme Court justice.
She also made comments that her grades were less than stellar and that the only reason she was deleted because of affirmative action.
This woman is an unmade bed but the scary part is that she has to explain to the black DEI hire what the subjects are that the SCOTUS is debating. So sad and be assured…both are the personification of what an “activist judge” is all about!
I would counter that neutrality is often a reflection of the status quo. Sotomayor’s “Wise Latina” philosophy suggests that all judges bring their life experiences to the bench; those from privileged backgrounds simply have their experiences normalized as “neutral,” while those from marginalized backgrounds are labeled “activist” or “biased” when they mention theirs.
Take Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing. He turned into a mewling mess when he was on the hot seat while being questioned about his past, apparently a very privileged past as a frat boy who loved….beer. It’s obvious Kavanaugh’s IS an elitist who has never experienced that kind of scrutiny at the time. Sotomayor pointing this out to an audience is not an attack or ‘out of bounds’ for a Justice. She was making a valid distinction.
Turley points out that both attended Ivy League schools. However, this ignores the trajectory of their lives.
Kavanaugh entered those institutions as the son of two attorneys (intergenerational wealth and professional status).
Sotomayor entered as a first-generation student from a housing project in the Bronx.
I would argue that attending the same university doesn’t erase 20 years of disparate formative experiences regarding economic security. Justice Sotomayor who had the experience and knowledge that justice Kavanaugh’s expectation that these detainments were only ‘temporary’ showed his complete lack of experience with reality given his sheltered life.
Turley cites Kavanaugh’s work with the homeless as proof of his connection to the working class. But most people like Kavanaugh working with the homeless could mean spending a day at a soup kitchen or cleaning tables at a homeless shelter. There is a fundamental difference between charity (observed from above) and lived experience (shared from within). Sotomayor’s critique focuses on the “knowledge” gained from being part of a community, which is different from the perspective gained by volunteering for one.
Turley is attacking justice Sotomayor for pointing out an obvious distinction that thru her life experience clearly showed why Kavanaugh’s views on what seems to be a minor inconvenience ‘a temporary stop’ is really not what reality presents and why his opinion caused a lot of damage. One can’t blame Kavanaugh for it. He simply made an opinion out of ignorance. If he couldn’t understand why his love for beer was an issue during his confirmation hearings and, lets not forget, the accusations of sexual abuse from his college years because sheltered wealthy plebs don’t think consequences would apply to them. Kavanaugh was never fully investigated thanks to Trump.
blah, blah, blah
I guess the leveler might be inherent intelligence and the law itself. Soto was talking about “merit”. What does she mean, X?
Are you saying we should examine the lives of Kavanaugh’s parents and Sotomayor’s and their successes? Perhaps sets of grandparents? I think Kavanaugh’s grands were immigrants and impoverished? Perhaps greats. Gorsuch goes back to the Revolutionary War. Most likely some ups and downs.
Justice Sotomayor has explicitly stated that because “merit” is difficult to define in a vacuum, diverse life experiences actually add merit to the judicial system. For her, “merit” isn’t just a high IQ or a Yale degree (which both she and Kavanaugh possess); it includes the ability to see the real-world impact of a law on people whose lives are different from the judge’s own.
She argues that an “intelligent” reading of the law can still be “blind” if it doesn’t account for extrinsic factors—like how an hourly worker might lose their job for a “temporary stop” that a salaried professional wouldn’t even notice.
That’s why her experience is more valuable and offers a better insight than Kavanaugh’s experience.
Her view of merit is tied to the idea that a court is more legitimate and fair when litigants see their own lived realities reflected and understood by the bench.
Nearly everyone here is spouting racist or bigoted comments about her because they don’t understand nowhere near half of what most judges or even how the judicial system works. It’s purely arguments from ignorance.
Kavanaugh never lived a life of experience with poverty. Sotomayor did and she knows these differences are indeed important. Turley like Kavanough seems to be oblivious to this distinction precisely because he too is an elitist. Both can’t see the problem because of it. So Turley attacks Sotomayor as a defense mechanism rather than a genuine criticism.
X –
As usual, an unreal comment. “Kavanaugh was never fully investigated…” For what? Specifically? An unreliable accuser can’t remember the year or location of an alleged event. Can’t produce a single witness, but names a few that refute what she claims.
How do you even investigate that? And a college frat boy drinking beer is a problem decades later? That’s like blaming someone who gave up smoking for ever starting!
Talk about a shockingly elitist and ignorant attitude.
You post reads like you didn’t follow his confirmation and have no idea about his jurisprudence. Nor Sotomayor’s.
Par for the course. Keep posting. You are the poster boy for GOP turn-out-the-vote.
You already forget about Christine Blasey Ford? Wow.
The FBI did not interview the two primary figures: Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh himself.
Reports and subsequent Senate investigations found the Trump White House strictly limited who the FBI could talk to, capping the interview list at about 10 witnesses.
While the FBI set up a tip line that received roughly 4,500 entries, agents were reportedly not authorized to follow up on those leads. Instead, tips were forwarded directly to the White House Counsel’s office without independent vetting.
The argument that Dr. Ford was “unreliable” because she lacked specific details is countered by psychological experts and trauma researchers who testified that it is common for survivors to remember the central trauma (the assault) with 100% certainty while “peripheral details” (the date or exact location) may fade over decades.
Dr. Ford passed a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent regarding her allegations, which her supporters cite as a marker of her sincerity.
Surely you have access to google and other search engines to verify these claims. You’re not THAT lazy are you?
Google!! Hilarious.
And here all this time I thought ” justice was blind” or supposed to be. Not seeing gender, sex, ethnicity or national origin. I thought justice only saw facts and the law (including the Constitution). Silly me….
Ah, a blathering dolt here to tell everyone why “he” is right and you all are “wrong”. And isn’t it quite amusing, X, that the Cavanaugh accuser, much like E Jean Carroll, were slim on details or those details were completely wrong?