Diversity for the Supremes is not new

Jeffrey Toobin writes an interesting piece at The New Yorker on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court.

He reviews the history of ‘diversity’ in connection with appointments and concludes that this is not new in the history of the Court, recalling for instance the existence of the ‘so called Catholic seat’.

He concludes his article:-

Supreme Court Justices are less bound by precedent than any other kind of judge, so one can never know for sure how even an experienced jurist like Sotomayor will rule once she has that freedom. As a judge on the Second Circuit, she has heard scarcely any cases involving the death penalty, gay rights, or the limits of executive power, which are all mainstays of the Supreme Court docket. Yet, like Obama, Sotomayor has been sympathetic to claims of discrimination by members of racial and religious minorities, and by the disabled. Also like the President, she is a believer in a strong federal government; she rejected claims by an abortion-rights group that the Bush Administration had violated the First Amendment by withholding aid from foreign groups that promote abortion. When the government pays the piper, she said, in effect, it gets to call the tune. It’s hard to attribute any of her opinions directly to her gender or to her ethnicity, but, as she has observed, her background is inseparable from her views—a circumstance that has applied to every Justice who has ever served on the Court. At this point, one can say only that Sotomayor looks to be what the tableau of President and nominee in the East Room suggested—a fitting representative of a changed and changing nation.

In fact Justice Souter once on the Court ruled in a way many found at variance with their prior pre-conceptions of Souter. So if the nomination passes, Justice Sotomayor may well surprise, delight and dismay people.

Toobin authored an excellent piece on Chief Justice Roberts recently. Adam commented on that piece as well.

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