The American Spectator : Sonia Sotomayor Taney

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African Americans are "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."
-- Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney writing in the Dred Scott decision

"And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society. Whatever the reasons... we may have different perspectives, either as some theorists suggest because of our cultural experiences or as others postulate because we have basic differences in logic and reasoning...."
-- Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in her speech delivered for the Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001

The controversial nomination by President Obama of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court would not be the first time a Democrat in the White House put forward a nominee who had trouble viewing the Constitution as a colorblind document. A nominee who went on to use his personal racial beliefs as a way to justify the results of a controversial decision from the bench.

The Sotomayor nomination brings America full circle to the beliefs expressed by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision, in which Taney used his personal racial beliefs as the justification to legalize slavery. Sotomayor has been an explicit advocate of the idea that "by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice bot h to the law and society." This is a sentiment with which Taney was in full agreement.

Roger Taney, a prominent Maryland Democratic lawyer and supporter of President Andrew Jackson, was a slave owner, as was Jackson himself. He was given two of the most prestigious appointments in Jackson's Cabinet, serving as Attorney General of the United States (1831-1833) and Secretary of the Treasury (1833-1834). In 1836 Jackson appointed his friend the fifth Chief Justice of the United States, a position Taney held until his death in 1864. Just as Sotomayor is today touted as the first Hispanic and third woman to be appointed, Taney was the first Roman Catholic to hold the position of Chief Justice.

Unapologetically, Taney held racial beliefs deriving from what Sotomayor calls a "cultural experience." This cultural experience led to Taney's firm belief that if one was not of the white race that individual was inferior and that blacks specifically were simply unable to live on a plain of equality with whites. In 1857, with the arrival of Dred Scott v. Sandford on the Supreme Court docket, Taney set about the task of writing his personal racial views into the Constitution. The case involved a slave by the name of Dred Scott, who had sued for his freedom insisting he had become free when his owner had taken him to US territory where slavery was outlawed.

On March 6, 1857 Taney led a 7-2 decision of the Supreme Court in which he ruled that there was a Constitutional right to own slaves. How did he know this? As former Judge and Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork has written: "Such a right [to slavery] is nowhere to be found in the Constitution." Bork adds that Taney "knew it [that a right to slavery existed in the Constitution' because he was passionately convinced that it must be a right."

This is precisely the core of Sotomayor's repeatedly expressed belief that judges should not only make policy from the bench, but should use the "richness" of their "cultural experience" to do so. This was exactly what Taney did in the Dred Scott decision. He wasn't shy about it, either.

In writing his decision Taney used what Sotomayor calls the "richness" of his "cultural experience" as a white slave owner to describe Dred Scott and his fellow African-Americans as " beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations." Indeed, Taney went on to say that blacks were "so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit."

So unremarkable did Taney believe his beliefs to be that he ascribed his racial views as "fixed and universal in the civilized portion of the white race…regarded as an axiom in morals as well as in politics, which no one thought of disputing, or supposed to be open to dispute; and men in every grade and position in society daily and habitually acted upon it in their private pursuits, as well as in matters of public concern, without doubting for a moment the correctness of this opinion."

This is an early version of Sotomayor's own troubling actions in Ricci v. DeStefano, the increasingly infamous New Haven firefighters case in which whites and one Hispanic who took a race-neutral test were denied promotion, allegedly because of their color. With the discovery of a statement by Judge Sotomayor that "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life," it appears quite clear she followed the same line of thinking employed by Roger Taney in 1857's Dred Scott decision. To wit: employ one's racial views as a white slave owner or Latina as a weapon to discriminate against people of a different race than the judge, ignoring the Constitution in favor of the "richness" and "cultural experience" provided by being a white slave owner or Latina.

Plainly put, this line of thinking results in Taney's Dred Scott decision in 1857 and Sotomayor's New Haven firefighters decision today. And just as Taney viewed his racial views as unremarkably "fixed and universal," so too are Sotomayor's views not seen as controversial among the identity politics crowd. Indeed, National Journal's longtime legal analyst Stuart Taylor says that "her thinking is representative of the Democratic Party's powerful identity-politics wing."

As exemplified by the Dred Scott decision and Roger Taney, racism runs like a scarlet thread through the entire history of the Democratic Party. Today, it goes under the name of "identity politics." Once upon a time it was slavery, which became segregation, which became lynching, which became racial quotas, which became identity politics. But make no mistake, whatever its disguise, racism is to the Democratic Party as Lord Voldemort is to Harry Potter stories -- always present, sometimes visible, sometimes not. Today the face hidden on the back of a professor's turbaned head, tomorrow the youthful ghost of a Hogwarts student supposedly dead decades earlier. But one way or another, Voldemort is always, always there.

So too with race and the Democrats, as evidenced by two nominees of President Franklin Roosevelt. Like Taney and Sotomayer, both of FDR's nominees had a cultural experience that turned on race, and one with religion.

FDR's nomination of Democratic Senator Hugo Black of Alabama on August 12, 1937, was confirmed a mere five days later, rushed by anxious Democrats who controlled the Senate. With good reason. (A considerable hat tip here to Bruce Bartlett, author of Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past.)

Page: 1 2 3 >

Letter to the Editor

topics:
Supreme Court, Democratic Party, Sonia Sotomayor, Ku Klux Klan, Segregation

Peter Buxton| 5.28.09 @ 6:29AM

"Additionally, both Senators Black and Byrnes were active supporters of attempts by Republicans to pass anti-lynching bills in the 1930s."

Did you get this sentence correct...?

Marcell| 5.28.09 @ 7:01AM

Wow!! now this story is a great example of how to spin an issue... Wow!! I am blown away by what I just read (Whistle).

Eric Damon| 5.28.09 @ 7:02AM

I am afraid that the current members of the GOP in the Congress are not going to stand up for what is right, and if they do oppose Sotomayor the opposition will be weak. The drumbeat has already started that opposing this nominee is some sort of attack on Hispanics/Latinos and will drive the "Hispanic vote" away from the GOP...as if there were some powerful Hispanic voting bloc that consistently supports the GOP. But the clueless bubbleheads at GOP headquarters and in the halls of Congress seem hell bent on barely opposing Sotomayor in order to "keep their powder dry" for an even worse nominee down the road. They all seem to be taking the advice of the 'friendly' media and 'moderate' Republicans that believe that the Party should simply roll over for the president and not fulfil their advise and consent role for this nominee. What the GOP does here will send a strong signal as to whether the Party is going to be what Rush Limbaugh termed an "oppressed minority" or a viable opposition party.

Martin| 5.28.09 @ 7:48AM

WONDERFUL piece. The unpleasant reality is that the GOP doesn't have the numbers to stop Sotomayor, and would look bigoted by trying too hard. However she will be a rotten justice, will almost certainly push Kennedy back towards the right by her bullying, and will give us an excellent argument against the Dems the next time we get to nominate a Bork.

Marcell| 5.28.09 @ 7:54AM

Conservatism reminds me of what could happen in a debate class. One person would be assigned to debate a perspective that they might totally disagree with, yet that person makes a great argument on an issue that don't even make sense.

Now, just imagine if all that persons friends disagreed with that perspective, but they convince themselves to agree anyway in order to support their friend. Eventually they would come to believe the nonsense if they had to argue the same position for weeks, thus explains how you conservatives trick yourselves into believing the emotional psychobabble that you support.

I believe that great political strategist who appose your twisted perspectives should take advantage of you & your support for terrible ideas by helping you dig the whole deeper & deeper so you can bury yourselves ( Political Party) in a whole so deep that it would take years to get out of it.

It is one thing for Democrats to set the poison out there for you, & it is another for you to choose to pick the poison up & gulp, gulp, gulp.

Wow!! I am still blown away by what I have just read.

Martin| 5.28.09 @ 8:35AM

If Obama were a moderate on economics as he is on foreign policy I would agree with you -- we'd be stuck until at least 2016 and probably 2020 or 2024. However he is an economic illiterate, who has already made several major blunders, and keeps choosing the most expensive and damging way of achieving his objectives (eg CAFE standards and cap/trade instead of higher gas taxes).

The next 4 years will be highly unpleasant, therefore, but should result in a GOP President and both houses of Congress in 2012 unless we're silly enough to nominate another Bush/McCain.

Indiana Alex| 5.28.09 @ 8:36AM

You know how true this hits home when the liberals whine.

They abhor logic and intellectual rigor.

Old Texican| 5.28.09 @ 9:04AM

Mr. Lord, well written!

When the light of history shines brightly on our country's mistakes during that history, we should learn from those mistakes, and try to make corrections.
Conversely, as you have so carefully pointed out, our country has managed to make some correct decisions, and those too should provide a learning experience.
Sadly, as some of the comments here illustrate, many of our countrymen simply cannot learn.

They absolutely buy into the PRAVDA of their imaginations, rather than accepting the evidence of their lying eyes. They are just terrified of real facts and real truths.
Thank you for the class in historical facts on record.

DM's Lover| 5.28.09 @ 9:10AM

Hello David Mathews,

David honey, why did you leave so early again?

I really think we need to talk. All this anger towards conservatives is really producing zero results-----and I'm talking in the sack too.

I mean, look at Obama's poll numbers---going down, down, down, -----kind of like you are, if you know what I mean.

Maybe saying "your photography sucks" was too strong a statement----a new line of work besides DKos might be just what you need.

Retail is not so bad---may a job at Ritz Camera could help you with your ailing photog skills (along with some other "ailing" droopy things).

Seth
(remember David, it's not the size that counts---well, in your case, maybe it is)

Louis Jenkins| 5.28.09 @ 9:42AM

"When a strict interpretation of the Constitution, according to the fixed rules which govern the interpretation of laws, is abandoned, and the theroretical opinions of individuals are allowed to control its meaning, we have no longer a Constitution; we are under the government of individual men, who for the time being have power to declare what the Constitution is, according to their own views of what it ought to mean." (Justice Benjamin Curtis, dissenting opinion to Taney's Dread Scott decision.) Oh, by and by, please recall that Taney was a Democrat appointee, Dread Scott's master had moved from Missouri to New York where slavery no longer existed when the case was heard by the Supremes, and that under top Missouri Court case law Scott was a "free man". This case spurred the formation of the Republican Party, a party that is accused of hating people of color, xemophobic, and dead.

Jeffrey Lord| 5.28.09 @ 10:15AM

Peter Buxton...

You are right..I meant "opponents" not "supporters"...the two Senators refused to oppose lunching.
Thanks,

Jeffrey Lord| 5.28.09 @ 10:21AM

That would be "lynching"...both men were, I assume, robustly in favor of lunching....

Teleprompter Messiah| 5.28.09 @ 11:05AM

Interesting article. The thing to do with Sotomayer is put her thinking out in the public domain. Senate Republicans probably can't stop her being appointed, but they sure as how can Bork her and show her nomination is nothing more than Hispandering.

Mattled| 5.28.09 @ 11:29AM

When opposing her, at every opportunity, conservatives should point out she is female and Hispanic, ----I mean every single time.

Take away their liberal talking point ad nausea m, and that will enable the conservatives to focus on her (lack of) jurisprudence and intellect.

This is a tactic used by the best sales people----address the issue head on and don't let the mark decide when to bring it up.

She's Hispanic and Female.
She's Hispanic and Female.She's Hispanic and Female.She's Hispanic and Female.She's Hispanic and Female.She's Hispanic and Female.She's Hispanic and Female.She's Hispanic and Female.She's Hispanic and Female.

DORIS HOCHMAN| 5.28.09 @ 6:22PM

THE PUBLIC IS GETTING MEANER, NASTIER, AND CRUELER BY THE DAY OR I AM I JUST NOTICING IT. "IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE THE WAY I DO, THEN YOU SHOULDN'T BE THINKING AT ALL".
SONIA WAS MY STUDENT IN MIDDLE ELEM. SCHOOL. SHE HAD CARING AND INTERESTED PARENTS. SHE WAS A LOVELY LITTLE GIRL WHO HAS SUCCEEDED BEYOND ANYONE'S EXPECTATIONS BECAUSE SHE USED WHAT G-D GAVE HER.
MAY SHE BLESS THIS COUNTRY WITH HER POINT OF VIEW...WE NEED SOME INTELLIGENCE BACK ON THE SUPREME COURT TO REPLACE THE EGOCENTRIC MEANESS THAT RESIDES THERE NOW!!!

Old Texican| 5.28.09 @ 7:25PM

Hi Doris
Thank you for writing.
(that little button on the left drops all caps.)
I don't recognize G-D. In fact I don't use that curse.
If you are speaking of GOD, the creator of the Universe that sees every single sparrow fall, then use HIS NAME. "God" will suffice, as will "Yahweh" or even "Lord of Lords and of The Universe".
I personally love that little Sonia got to attend PRIVATE SCHOOL instead of the hellholes many American children attend.

If she cannot obey the constitution and breaks her oath before even being sworn in, no matter how sweet she is, I cannot support her.
IF she is sworn in...she is already foresworn. (That means "oathbreaker".)
I have read her words and either she was lying then...or she will be lying when she takes her oath of office.
If she wants to gift our country with "her point of view"...then she should run for Congress.

If you truly were her teacher...why didn't you teach her that?

Nick| 5.28.09 @ 9:17PM

Miss Hochman,

I was a lovely little boy when I was in junior high school. That doesn't mean I should be a Supreme Court Justice.

The first prerequisite to holding elective office or being a judge: Knowing that everyone has the God-given right to life from conception to natural death.

If you don't know that simple fact, you have no business making legal decisions for others.

Marcell| 5.29.09 @ 2:07AM

*************

It is sad to know that their descendants abandoned the Democratic Party for the Republican Party after the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.

The greatest thing about it all is, “I enjoy verbally abusing them online," because, the White Supremacist are still losing. Even if the Repugs help elect a Republican, he or she will be just as liberal as Bu$h.

Yes, God is blessing America!!

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_CSUPQ7EpU_4/SGOTCMdFSfI/AAAAAAAAYbU/ZI5YCQr8OBg/S1600-R/superman.jpg

Gerard Jackson| 5.29.09 @ 7:08AM

I fear poor little Marcell is a typical hardcore Democrat: dense, ignorant, deeply bigoted and vicious with it. The party of Justice Taney is indeed the right place for him. For those of you who would like to get an insight to into Marcell’s ability to remain impervious to reality may I suggest you read “When Prophecy Fails”. It’s somewhat on the dry side but very instructive with respect to the cultist mindset that afflicts leftists and of which Marcell is a pathetic example.

RAULKA| 5.30.09 @ 6:18AM

Dear Mr. Mathews, as a conservative I appreciate what you are trying to do - namely to portray liberals as idiotic, foulmouthed bigots. But you should tune it down a bit, or people would realize you are actually a staunch conservative trying to besmirch liberals.
Less is more. But keep up good work.

Marcell| 5.30.09 @ 7:12AM

Gerard Jackson

In all my years of studying conservatism, I have realize that the labels you people try to project on others usually true about themselves.

I am honest enough to accept a reality, but can you?

Festinger observes:

"A man with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point. "We have all experienced the futility of trying to change a strong conviction, especially if the convinced person has some investment in his belief. We are familiar with the variety of ingenious defenses with which people protect their convictions, managing to keep them unscathed through the most devastating attacks. "But man's resourcefulness goes beyond simply protecting a belief. Suppose an individual believes something with his whole heart; suppose further that he has a commitment to this belief, that he has taken irrevocable actions because of it; finally, suppose that he is presented with evidence, unequivocal and undeniable evidence, that his belief is wrong: what will happen? The individual will frequently emerge, not only unshaken, but even more convinced of the truth of his beliefs than ever before. Indeed, he may even show a new fervor about convincing and converting other people to his view. "

marcell| 5.30.09 @ 7:29AM

You people are extremely weird.

Pingback| 7.16.09 @ 4:56PM

FACTS: WHY VOTE AGAINST SOTOMAYOR « FactReal links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:

…Two Kids from the Projects Cue the laugh track: Sotomayor ’saved’ baseball Would all parties receive fair treatment from Justice Sotomayor? What If Sotomayor Were White? Sonia Souter Left Sonia Sotomayor Taney Flashback: Sotomayor Ruled Against Teen Blogger in ‘D-Bag Case’ Obama’s Ideas for a Radical Court MarkLevinShow.com This entry was posted on July 14, 2009 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Law.…

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The American Spectator

Comments

Peter Buxton| 5.28.09 @ 6:29AM

Marcell| 5.28.09 @ 7:01AM

Eric Damon| 5.28.09 @ 7:02AM

Martin| 5.28.09 @ 7:48AM

Marcell| 5.28.09 @ 7:54AM

Martin| 5.28.09 @ 8:35AM

Indiana Alex| 5.28.09 @ 8:36AM

Old Texican| 5.28.09 @ 9:04AM

DM's Lover| 5.28.09 @ 9:10AM

Louis Jenkins| 5.28.09 @ 9:42AM

Jeffrey Lord| 5.28.09 @ 10:15AM

Jeffrey Lord| 5.28.09 @ 10:21AM

Teleprompter Messiah| 5.28.09 @ 11:05AM

Mattled| 5.28.09 @ 11:29AM

DORIS HOCHMAN| 5.28.09 @ 6:22PM

Old Texican| 5.28.09 @ 7:25PM

Nick| 5.28.09 @ 9:17PM

Marcell| 5.29.09 @ 2:07AM

Gerard Jackson| 5.29.09 @ 7:08AM

RAULKA| 5.30.09 @ 6:18AM

Marcell| 5.30.09 @ 7:12AM

marcell| 5.30.09 @ 7:29AM

Pingback| 7.16.09 @ 4:56PM

Wholesale Lingerie| 9.5.09 @ 9:48PM

Wedding Dresses| 9.9.09 @ 11:09PM

123213| 9.15.09 @ 6:51AM

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