Roger Smith looks across the Pond to consider gender & ethnic minorities
By all accounts, the confirmation hearing for prospective US Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor was unrevealing. The New York Times pronounced: “Despite 583 questions from senators amid wall-to-wall news media coverage, her hearing may prove to be as notable for what the country did not learn about her as much as for what it did.”
Ms Sotomayor may not understand the English expression “playing a dead bat” but she certainly knows how to do it. She took a line and stuck to it: a judge’s job is “not to make” but “to apply” the law. She resisted discussing hypothetical cases: she said that she did not want to prejudice any case that she might subsequently hear.
Her opponents had only one strong card. In five separate speeches over a decade, Ms Sotomayor had included the same, now famous, praise of judicial diversity: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion.” Just once, in 2001, she apparently completed
