Judge Sotomayor Meant What She Said
June 5th, 2009 Posted in Obama
Judge Sotomayor said the following:
I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Critics have seized on this as evidence that Sotomayor believes in identity politics, or what political scientists call “sociological representation,” the idea that only people of a certain race, ethnicity, or gender, can be competent to speak on certain issues or have certain opinions or represent certain constituencies.