In an earlier post I remarked on the bad writing in Sonia Sotomayor’s “A Latina Judge’s Voice,” and suggested that maybe it was “unscripted” after all (or based on cursory notes), with a Berkeley law student tasked to transcribe it. But, I said, Judge Sotomayor should at least have had enough pride of authorship to proofread the text before publication and clean it up. This prompted a California lawyer to write to me:
I went to law school at Berkeley. I can say from my own experience with the law journals there that if we were talking about the California Law Review, then you’d have to convince me that Sotomayor wasn’t given the chance to edit the speech; if we’re talking about the La Raza journal, you’d have to convince me that she was.
I obviously don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me to discover that she didn’t know the speech was even going to be published until she received a complimentary copy of the issue.
I will say that La Raza had awesome food (although we had Zachary’s Pizza–something to try if you’re in Berkeley), but the place was not a stickler for procedure.
Good food, casual atmosphere . . . sounds like a fun place!