Wisdom and empathy

President Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. The president cited empathy as a trait he found important in a justice. Judge Sotomayor has been quoted as saying in a speech published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in 2002, "Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases," she declared. "I am . . . not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, . . . there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman 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."

Parsing this statement could fill many essays. First of all I agree that wisdom goes beyond intelligence. Many wise people do not have high IQ's and many many people with high IQ scores are not wise. That being said why exactly would a wise Latina woman be more wise than a white male? This is taken in our group politics world as being conventional wisdom, but for what reason? Are we to assume that Latina women are more likely to be from a disadvantaged life and therefore that is what she means by their experiences? If a white male had made that statement any hope of being confirmed would be over. Are we to assume that ethnicity is a predictor of wisdom? Are Latinas known to be wiser than Caucasians? Are women generally known to be wiser than men? Are Latina women generally known to be wiser than white males? None of these things are true of course.

Is Judge Sotomayor a wise woman? I can not answer that but our Senators will be asked to. As for empathy, President Obama seems to think this is an important component for a justice. I think it is an important component for all humans but not for a judge in their professional capacity. I expect Justices to affirm law plain and simple. If the personalities involved in a case are rich or poor should have absolutely no bearing on any case. A case before the Supreme court which Judge Sotomayor ruled on illustrates this. A test for promotion for the New Haven fire department was allowed to be thrown out because not enough blacks scored high on the test. The judges ruling this way showed empathy for the blacks but showed anything but empathy for the people who did well on the test. One of the fire fighters Frank Ricci went to enormous lengths to prepare for this test. See more detail on this in a piece by Charles Krauhammer today. A key disagreement I have with government action in most cases is that by trying to show empathy or altruism for a single group or many groups they necessarily show the opposite to other groups. They usually defend this by saying they are of the majority group and therefore have built in advantages. The problem is they are individuals. Just as Fire fighter Ricci went to person expense and inconvenience to obtain a promotion, being a member of a Caucasian group had no effect on his personal life. Empathy would have required the court let the results of the test be made to stand regardless of ethnicity.

Judge Sotomayor most certainly will become Justice Sotomayor. The Republicans do not have the votes to defeat her if they chose to. They must use this however as a chance to explain why using empathy as a judicial philosophy is not only wrong, it is anything but empathetic, and certainly not wise.