2001—“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,” declares Second Circuit judge Sonia Sotomayor. In the course of her muddled speech to a Berkeley audience, Sotomayor calls into question the desirability of the traditional norm of judicial impartiality and displays a crude quota mentality.
Implementing his promise—or, rather, threat—to select justices based on their willingness to indulge their “deepest values,” “core concerns,” and “the depth and breadth of [their] empathy,” President Obama in May 2008 makes Sotomayor his first pick for the Supreme Court.