printWhat happens when the highest court in the land admits to the bench an individual who emotes rather than reasons, and is without the intellectual wherewithal to tell reason from emotion? You get the not-so-wise Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who delivered an unhinged disquisition in favor of institutionalizing affirmative action forever-after.
On Monday, reports John Fund, “the Supreme Court voted six to two to uphold the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), which was passed with support from 58 percent of that state’s voters in 2006. It simply enshrines in Michigan’s constitution that the state should not engage in race discrimination.” (Read “BUSH’S AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AMBUSH” as a refresher.)
But from where Sotomayor is perched, as a confessed recipient of affirmative action (“Sonia SotoSetAsides once admitted that her test scores ‘were not comparable to her colleagues at Princeton and Yale’”), the choice should not be up to Michigan voters.
At 58 pages, her dissent was longer than the opinions of all the other justices combined — and she took the relatively unusual step of reading it passionately from the bench.
“The stark reality is that race still matters,” Sotomayor said. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination.” She went on to chastise the majority’s opinion: “My colleagues misunderstand the nature of the injustice worked by” the Michigan amendment.
At least that excuse for a Chief Justice, John Roberts (the man whose clever casuistry gave us Obamacare’s individual mandate), offered a firm rejoinder to this surly woman:
Roberts directly confronted Sotomayor in his own concurring opinion: “It is not ‘out of touch with reality’ to conclude that racial preferences may themselves have the debilitating effect . . . that the preferences do more harm than good. To disagree with the dissent’s views on the costs and benefits of racial preferences is not to ‘wish away, rather than confront’ racial inequality. People can disagree in good faith on this issue, but it similarly does more harm than good to question the openness and candor of those on either side of the debate.”
More about the career of SotoSetAsides.