Flashback: Alito Knows A Thing Or Two About Empathy Also
On Wednesday, Glenn Greenwald posted a key part of the transcript of Justice Samuel Alito's 2006 confirmation hearing, which suggests that, just three and a half years ago, Republicans thought empathy was a pretty righteous quality in a Supreme Court nominee. Well, we've dug up the footage of that portion of the hearing and, as it turns out, he sells the empathy pretty well.
Now either Alito believed what he told the Judiciary Committee, or he believed that the then-Republican led panel wanted to hear that sentiment. But either way it makes the recent Republican insistence that Supreme Court nominees sit bereft of empathy on the bench a little bit hard to believe.
Earlier today, Greg Sargent dug up an old interview in Ladies Home Journal in which Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (a now-retired Reagan nominee) suggested that her experience as a woman impacted her jurisprudence.
Josh
Matt
Eric
This SHOULD quash the concern, but I doubt that it will.
Somehow, it will be argued that it's appropriate for Judge Alito to discuss how the experiences of others influence his thinking--he didn't actually experience those things himself--he's just thinking about other people--but it isn't appropriate for the things that Judge Sotomayor experienced directly to influence her thinking.
May 29, 2009 1:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
yeah, it should, but won't.
The thing is that Alito and Sotomayor are just being honest. Find me a judge whose personal experience has no bearing upon their judicial opinion and you've found a dead judge.
A judge's job is to be impartial, but the definition of that word varies infinitely from person to person. Sotomayor, because of her experiences, will weigh something differently--solely upon her experiences/readings/interpretations. With time on the bench interacting with her fellows, her viewpoints will shift a bit. Her fellows will also change too.
I guess my point is that the Republican attacks in this vein are completely meaningless and really really dumb. Every judge is culpable. I remember hearing something that Thomas said as well that could be construed as a judge having a life, learning from it, and using it to make decisions. And hell, that's all humans. As long as they do their job honestly and do their best to try and weigh everything, that's all we can ask for.
May 29, 2009 3:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why should they even bother "arguing" over this? They'll simply ASSERT: It's ok for him. But not for her!
May 29, 2009 6:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will these repubs never learn about da google?
May 29, 2009 2:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess not. Brian Beutler is now on the main TPMDC talking about Thomas's empathy. I guess my memory (in reply to CT above) isn't so bad!
May 29, 2009 3:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
For the GOP, empathy is in the mind of the empathizer. If one empathizes with GOP ideology, then empathy's cool... otherwise...
May 29, 2009 4:37 PM | Reply | Permalink