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PrintMay 28, 2009
Would all parties receive fair treatment from Justice Sotomayor?
Judge Sotomayor has demonstrated a troubling self-satisfaction at her ethnic heritage, which she sees as one of her qualifications for high office. Recall her comment that she would render better decisions than a white man.
One wonders how, for instance, a Native American would feel in her court, given her view that ethnic experiences should be central to the judging process and the quite ferocious history of Spanish domination of Native Americans during the Spanish settlement of the New World.
Sotomayor is an old Spanish name derived from the use of localities in family surnames in the Middle Ages in Spain. Soto means a grove and was a common surname, rendered in many different forms, including the explorer and conquistador Hernando deSoto. The Sotomayor crest of arms and further information on the family history can be seen here.
It would be a very dangerous precedent to put on the Court someone so self-involved with her personal heritage such that is not only intrudes on her judging, but, indeed, that such intrusion rather than an embarrassment to an impartial jurist, is central to her jurisprudence. Can former subjects of Spanish conquests be assured that they will receive equal justice in her court? The U.S. itself fought several wars with the Spanish Conquest -- in Florida, in Texas and in the Southwest. Can such historical struggle of the white man to throw off the tyranny of the Spanish Conquest come back to haunt white parties to actions before Justice Sotomayor?
