Manny Miranda, president of the Third Branch Conference, says that Judge Sonia Sotomayor would be unlike any previous justices, insofar as she epitomizes the radical, postmodern campus left. Miranda, as Deal Hudson notes in “Why Catholics Should Oppose Sotomayor,” knows quite a lot about Supreme Court nomination fights, having been the prime mover behind derailing President Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers.

Hudson elaborates:

There is a more basic, epistemological issue [than abortion] at stake: [Sotomayor] denies we can have the kind of knowledge necessary to affirm that abortion is morally reprehensible. If confirmed, Sotomayor would be the first postmodern justice on the Supreme Court. Sotomayor believes knowledge and value claims are evaluated relative to the culture, ethnicity, and gender they represent. ”I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion,” she was famously quoted as saying in 1994. This line takes on a deeper meaning when understood as a direct response to Sandra Day O’Connor’s use of the maxim, “A wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.” The fundamental difference between Sotomayor and the present justices, Miranda explained, was exposed when the Supreme Court overturned her <a style=”text-transform: none; text-indent: 0px; color: #4061c4; text-decoration: none; border: 0px;” title=”http://ninthjustice.nationaljournal.com/2009/06/justices-reject-sotomayor-posi.php” href=”http://ninthjustice.nationaljournal.com/2009/06/justices-reject-sotomayor-posi.php” target=”_blank”>ruling on the New Haven firefighters’ case, Ricci v. DeStefano. A white firefighter went to court objecting to a promotions exam that was nullified by the city when all the minority candidates failed it. “Ricci is a great case which gives you a window into what she is about,” Miranda explains; “the case itself is arguable, but it exposes what she is about — multiculturalism, gender, and ethnicity; no one else on the court represents that.” In other words, justice is not blind, and truth cannot be objective. What matters is not what is thought or expressed, but who thinks or says it.