Law Students

two other people capture what I?m thinking perfectly

By Luis

Read two posts this morning that I wanted to note because they capture what I’m thinking pretty perfectly.

Julian Sanchez on the reaction from some quarters to Sonia Sotomayor. Sanchez is a lot like me- sort of libertarian-leaning, not terribly comfortable with lefty identity politics, and not very close to his Hispanic heritage. And still, apparently, pretty damned angry over the reception Sonia Sotomayor has gotten. The whole thing is really worth reading, but the money graph is:

Look, it?s not racist to oppose a Latina judicial nominee, or to oppose affirmative action, or to point out genuine evidence of ethnic bias on the part of minorities. What we?re seeing here, though, is people clinging to the belief that Sotomayor has to be some mediocrity who struck the ethnic jackpot, that whatever benefit she got from affirmative action must be vastly more significant than her own qualities, that she?s got to be a harpy boiling with hatred for whitey, however overwhelming the evidence against all these propositions is. This is really profoundly ugly.

Perfectly encapsulates one of the prime reasons why I can’t touch the modern Republican party with a ten foot pole, even if I’m in several ways far to the ‘right’ of the center of the Democratic party.

(Tangentially, I’ve been meaning to write a post on ‘activist’ judging, and why the core accusation rings true for most people but those pushing it as a political accusation are mostly just fearmongering and quite often blatantly lying about the legal realities they are purportedly discussing. Sadly, I will not have time to do that any time soon; if you’re curious, in the meantime, I highly recommend reading the section on judges in Audacity of Hope- a fair, nuanced, intelligent discussion of the issue that doesn’t get too into the weeds of judicial interpretation but does explain the problems with the situation in pretty plain English.)

The other thing is a piece by John Scalzi on ‘being a closet introvert.’ Apparently he tells people all the time that he’s an introvert, and they don’t believe him. I’ve had the exact same experience, for reasons he lays out well. I’ll keep this bookmarked to send to people next time I have the experience. ;)

Full post as published by Luis Villa's Home Page on May 31, 2009 (boomark / email).