Legal Commentary

Sotomayor is Lucky in Her Enemies

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

Ed Meese, he of the “Experts Agree” T-Shirt, is back in the news today for his orchestration of the opposition to Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination.

This news comes on the heels of the first possibly significant blot on her otherwise sterling record: it seems Sotomayor is a member of an all-woman club, the Belizean Grove. This is an issue because the Code of Judicial Conduct bans memberships in groups that practice invidious discrimination. The defense that discrimination by the relatively less powerful against the more powerful is not “invidious” cuts little ice with me. The defense that no men have actually attempted to join is a closer call. It’s probably true, so it’s technically sufficient. But it’s also the same defense used by men-only and whites-only and {fill in the blank}-only clubs for decades, as they sat secure in the knowledge that no one would bother trying given formal or informal rules limiting membership.

So, Ed Meese’s intervention comes at a very fortunate time for Sotomayor.

Full post as published by Discourse.net on June 18, 2009 (boomark / email).