The problem with the nomination of Clarence Thomas, aside from the whole Anita Hill angle, was that he had very little relevant experience to be a Supreme Court judge. In the 1970’s, he had served as an Assistant Attorney General of Missouri for a few years, had been an attorney for Monsanto for three years, and was a legislative assistant to Sen. John Danforth for a while. In the 1980’s, he joined the Reagan administration as the Assistant Secretary of Education for the Office of Civil Rights, and then served as Chairman of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In March 1990, he began serving on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. He had only been a judge for 19 months when he was nominated to replace Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court.
It was rather obvious that the Poppy Bush administration wanted to appoint someone black to replace Thurgood Marshall (who had argued the Brown v. Topeka Board of Education case for the NAACP). But, it was also obvious that they were picking Thomas because he was anomalously conservative for a black man. There were many more qualified black judges than Clarence Thomas.
It’s clear that the Obama administration wanted to pick a woman to be on the Court because it currently has 8 men and 1 woman. It’s also clear that the Obama administration had an interest in nominating the first Latino Justice. From that standpoint, there are some similarities with Thomas. In both cases, elements of race and life-story played a part in the selection process. But Sonia Sotomayor is about as qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice as it is possible to be. There may be other judges who are more qualified in some objective sense, but it’s doubtful if there are any Latinas who are more qualified. Moreover, she wasn’t selected primarily because of her ideology, as Thomas clearly was. Sotomayor fits several needs/desires at once without sacrificing anything in terms of quality. That’s why she is not a token candidate in the Clarence Thomas mold.
But, don’t tell that to Debbie Schlussel:
Our President chose this chick because like, J-Lo, she’s a Puerto Ricana from South Bronx who went from rags to semi-riches. And that’s it. That’s the whole reason. What a joke. Guess I’m gonna have to refer to her as “Justice J-Lo,” once she gets confirmed by the Democrat dominated Senate. After all, neither J-Lo or So-So have set any remarkable legal precedent in their lives. Neither have achieved legal greatness, and one of ‘em is about to become a legal Supreme.
Here’s a few other ideas for why Obama might have picked her. He could relate to the fact that her father died when she was nine years old and was absent from her upbringing thereafter. He could relate to her educational experience because they both got into Ivy League schools (Sotomayor and Michelle Obama are both Princeton alums) and both earned Ivy League law degrees, despite being racial minorities from humble beginnings. He, coming from the Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, could relate to someone that calls Greenwich Village home. In other words, Sonia Sotomayor has a tremendous amount in common with President Obama. He just might have picked for that reason.
