I submitted the following Op/Ed to The Sacramento Bee today... will be surprised if it gets printed.
“It’s Just Emotions That’s Taking Me Over”
by Katy Grimes
When the Bee Gees sang “It’s Just Emotions That’s Taking Me Over” in 1978 from the song “Emotions,” they were singing about love and loss – not law.
Sacramento Bee editorial writer Jill Duman doesn’t know the difference. In Duman’s Sac Bee op/ed “Until computers rule courtrooms, human beings will do,” June 8, 2009, she fails miserably to make her case… any case that is. (http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/1926965.html)
In her defense of Sonia Sotomayor’s statement "a wise Latina with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life" (during a speech titled "A Latina Judge's Voice"), Duman attributes this statement only to the 2001 speech, when in fact Sotomayor’s remark was frequently included in her speeches between 1994 and 2003 (Her speeches were released as part of Sotomayor's responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee's questionnaire).
Duman only argues emotion over fact, and of “experience” as a replacement for the rule of law. She makes it widely apparent that she does not respect the rule of law in America and instead prefers when “personal experiences affect the facts judges choose to see.” And then Duman foolishly says, “But substitute the word "different" for "better,"(in Sotomayor’s speech) and you get to another part of the story…” Duman did not address what Sonia Sotomayor actually said – she’s weakly arguing what she wished Sonia Sotomayor would have said.
"Personal experiences," said Sotomayor, "affect the facts that judges choose to see." Duman states, “And is that such a bad thing? She asks:
- Do we lose faith in a judge who has grown up in the same community as her defendants? What does that have to do with the primary function of the Judge as it pertains to impartially upholding the law?
- Is a teacher less credible because she struggled with dyslexia? Not if she learned to overcome it. Who wants a dyslexic teacher?
- Would you want to know your OB-GYN has borne babies of her own? How does that make her a better or worse doctor? Does a plastic surgeon need breasts in order to perform successful breast augmentations?
- Would you feel better or worse knowing that the surgeon operating on your child's heart has children at home?” No, but if he has a heart, I am sure he is a good heart doctor.
Duman’s weak arguments are purely emotion instead of rational, ignoring the more mature questions one would ask of their doctor or teacher about their training and professional track records.
Duman wrote of her experiences interviewing judges as a reporter for a legal periodical: “One judge remembered watching his own father preside over a courthouse, and his dad's willingness to laugh and empathize with the defendants.
Another, remembering her own wacky relatives, compared them to folks willing to represent themselves in court. A third judge spoke of his service year in urban America during the early 1960s and explained how that perspective clarified for him how difficult it might be for someone who is poor and unstable to meet court ordered requirements.
I thought of those judges as I read all the criticism about Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee…”
Yet she never once addressed that in America, Judges are expected to impartially uphold the rule of law by applying known principles to the laws, without the intervention of personal discretion in their application.
Contrast the following two statements, the first statement made by Judge Miriam Cederbaum, on the Southern district bench, and the second by Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Court of Appeals:
"Judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law."
Sotomayor when questioned whether "achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases," wondered if "by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society."
Duman’s contention that “our greatest hope is that those who have power over the rest of us aren't droids but people who bring their very best judgment to work based on what they've been trained to do and their own life experiences” in spite of her experiences “interviewing judges for the written profiles we published each week,” suggests her lack of respect for the primary function judges have in upholding the law. Instead she wants them to impose their “experiences” and personal “opinions,” claiming that as long as we try cases in front of “people” (judges), the final evaluation “will fall to a human,” to “evaluate” the law.
Duman, childishly wooed by the political-correctness of a Hispanic female Supreme Court Justice, has done a great disservice by ignoring the fact that judges must strive for impartiality, arriving at decisions guided by a dispassionate analysis of the law, regardless of their ethnicity or gender.
Katy Grimes
Sacramento
June 9, 2009