Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor got some pushback over her use of the phrase, “wise Latina,” in various public speeches she had made, and was called on to explain what she meant by it during the Senate confirmation hearings that would seat her on the High Court in 2009. I remember that there was no surfeit of ridicule over it from those on our side of the aisle.
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To refresh your memory, here was her vexing quote from a 2001 speech:
“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” Sotomayor said in a speech at 2001 at the University of California, Berkeley, law school. She made similar statements at other such events.
The judge explained during her testimony that she was trying to impress on the students that their life “experiences would enrich the legal system. I was also trying to inspire them to believe they could become anything they wanted to become, just as I have,” she said. But during questioning by then-Senator John Kyl (R-AZ), “Sotomayor admitted it was a poor choice of words,” calling it “a bad idea.”
At this point, Sen. Kyl pressed Sotomayor on why “[she] did not also talk much about the need for those future judges to set their prejudices aside.”
It’s a solid criticism of far-left progressives like the Justice, including among the politicians who are supposed to represent us when they’re in Washington, D.C. Ever since former President Donald Trump and the Republican majority in the U.S. Senate turned the Supreme Court back from its wayward slouch towards progressivism, Democrats and others among their party’s far-left have tried to tear down the credibility of the Court, especially conservatives like Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, over decisions they abhor. Here is just a smattering of RedState’s stories on that, including the ridiculous, nothingburger stories about flags:
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Getting back to Justice Sotomayor, she’s been somewhat embattled herself from some on the left, as my colleague Brittany Sheehan wrote recently, trying to push her to step down from the bench so that President Biden can nominate a younger leftist to take her place.
On Friday, Justice Sotomayor spoke during an event honoring her at Harvard University–and she gave some surprisingly wise advice to progressives who still haven’t recovered from their crying jag over recent conservative-majority Supreme Court decisions. While she did not single out any specific cases, it’s not difficult to guess she meant ones like Bruen and Roe, among others. Sotomayor told the members of the Harvard audience to essentiallypick themselves up and get over it:
There are days that I’ve come to my office after an announcement of a case and closed my door and cried. There have been those days. And there likely will be more.
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She continued:
There are moments when I’m deeply, deeply sad. There are moments when, yes, even I feel desperation. We all do. But you have to own it, you have to accept it, you have to shed the tears and then you have to wipe them and get up.
Sotomayor also spoke about the need to be collegial with others, especially anyone with whom you vehemently disagree on important issues–including her fellow Justices, saying that “[d]isagreeing about ideas doesn’t make another human being evil or bad,” but it’s difficult. That’s definitely a lesson many on the left, including at Harvard, could bear to hear and reform themselves on.
She also shared a touching anecdote about her mother, from around the time Sotomayor was nominated for the SCOTUS, according to the NY Times:
[S]he hesitated because her mother had been diagnosed with memory loss, and she worried about whether she would have enough time to spend with her.
Her mother’s reaction was swift and clear: “She stopped me, and she said, ‘Don’t you dare not do this because of me. You would take away the dream I spent my life building for you. I wanted you to be the very best you can.’”
Did the Justice talk about progressive ideals, many of which conservatives strongly disagree with? Of course. But I feel like she laid out a model for how faculty, students, and possibly future lawyers and judges should deal with those with whom they disagree: To accept it and move on, like an adult. This is how the government branches in our Republic are supposed to work, at their best. For that alone, she deserves kudos for imparting that truly human message.
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