No, actually, it doesn’t, but that’s ok.
Actually it does, but that’s ok. If it cannot be shown that these firefighters were denied promotions because of their race (and it cannot, because minorities were denied promotions as well) then there is no discrimination.
I’m sorry, Dio, but that’s just nonsense. They took an action based upon the results being not what they wanted in re: race of the people who passed. Many blacks pass = accept results. Few blacks pass = don’t accept results.
The discrimination is clear on the face. Indeed, the court concedes as much, IIRC, and simply says that the discrimination in question was necessary to avoid the possibility of discriminating against the black applicants through flawed testing, which would be a violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection clause.
It’s called disparate impact. You don’t have to be black and white, nor do your reasons have to be intentionally discriminatory.
Why do you think they cancelled the promotions?
Some think they cancelled the promotions because the promotion class didn’t have the right racial makeup. Then they are treating candidates differently according to race. If candidates of the favored group pass, promotions will be offered to them and others. If not enough candidates of the favored group pass, nobody gets promotions. The existence of promotion class depends only on the performance of candidates of the favored group; the performance of the other candidates is for naught, unless the favored group has suitable performance.
Why is this rôle of the favored group as kingmaker, so to speak, not an instance of differential treatment?
Mr Moto, you understand that the Duke Rape Cases never went to trial at all and were dismissed by the state’s attorney general before trial. Since the cases never got to trial they hardly seem a fair example of the application of some sort of judicial empathy standard.
With respect to medical negligence cases (and all other personal injury cases) the critical factor in the presentation of the case is to persuade the jury (twelve men good and true, but probably not all that excited about being here) that the plaintiff is a decent and respectable person who deserves to have his injury generously compensated. It is axiomatic that if a jury doesn’t like the person before it the jury will screw them. That is simple trial tactics and the marshaling of evidence, not some exercise in judicial empathy.
If the trial judge were to instruct that the jury should cut the one party or the other some slack because he had a tough life your contention might have some merit, and even more if some appellate court failed to reverse for that instruction. Don’t confuse the persuasion and salesmanship of a jury trial with the things that go on in the appellate review of those decisions. Any trial lawyer looks for a sympathetic jury and tries to persuade a jury to be sympathetic, on both sides of the case. That has nothing to do with whether or not the appeal judge is empathetic.
The press talks filibusters because the Republicans have been filibustering everything for the past two and a half years. Besides, Nelson and Bayh can counter Snowe and Collins.
They had more than enough people to do it before.
You think Nelson and Bayh will vote in favor of a filibuster here?
You do know that piece has been roundly lambasted, right? Here is Romesh Ponnuru writing in that bastion of the left, The National Review:
Even Rosen is trying to walk back from his article and nowsays that “Of course, Judge Sotomayor should be confirmed to the Supreme Court.”
RNC fumbles Sotomayor talking points
They’re mostly the expected boilerplate - “Republicans are the minority party, but our belief that judges should interpret rather than make law is shared by a majority of Americans”, however there are a few oddities:
As to the main question, barring some massive revelation I think Sottomayor will be confirmed fairly easily. She is obviously capable and has a wide range of legal experience; wider I believe than anyone currently sitting on the court. She was nominated by George HW Bush so it’s going to be hard to paint her as some extremist. And if the Republicans put up a huge fight it will hurt them with Hispanics and possibly women as well.
[Scotusblog](http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/the-dynamic-of-the-nomination-of-sonia-sotomayor/)has a great analysis of the nomination and he predicts an easy confirmation.I like the lady too, but what is your basis for this claim of wider legal experience than anyone on the Court? It seems like a bit of needless puffery to me.
They’ve been complete assholes for the past four months, so I think it’s quite possible.
It was one of the blogs I think though I can’t find it now; basically she has been a commercial litigator, prosecutor, trial judge and appellate judge.
I guess it depends on what we mean with the width metaphor. Many of the justices have varied legal backgrounds, having worked in both the public and private sector as well as in academia before the federal bench. But few did all of those things and stayed in each position as long as Sotomayor. She made partner at her firm. She worked for five years as a prosecutor (arguably a less redundant experience than working for the AG or SG) and has been a federal judge for sixteen–more than anyone other sitting justice served before appointment. She doesn’t necessarily have more lines on her legal resume than the sitting justices, but none have more than she and none match the depth of experience especially as a judge.
It always saddens me everytime that a new justice is appointed to serve on the Supreme Court, because, within hours, there are thousands, nay millions of people, who, rather than looking seriously at the person’s jurisprudence, seek for a quote to be taken out of context to support they’re predisposition about the nominee.
It’s pathetic.
I haven’t seen this discussed yet. In it, she states her acknowledgement that appeals courts serve as the platform for judical activism (“because it is…because Court of Appeals is where policy is made”), and then, upon realizing that her words are being recorded for posterity, exposes her arrogance and hypocrisy by jokingly acknowledging (for the benefit, apparently, of stupid, naive laymen) that that is not supposed to be the case.
(It’s interesting to note the laughter that her inadvertent admission and the realization that she has just spoken out loud what everyone knows to be the case but pretends to be otherwise elicits from her audience of law students and professors.)
To paraphrase Burt Reynolds from the movie Rough Cut: “I’ve only known this woman for minutes and already I don’t like her for years.” 
That you could post that after Hamlet’s post without any sense of irony is amazing.
Not really all that amazing considering I only made it approximately half way through the thread before skimming the rest to see if the subject had come up. Since I was skimming for mention of the appeals court remark and Hamlet’s post contains none, I never took note of what he had to say.
Now, having said that I fail to see what bearing it has on what I said. The quote was not taken out of context, and her embarrassed flailings once she realized that she had said out loud what was clearly supposed to be kept under wraps, exposed both her judicial arrogance and her hypocrisy.
Hence my assessment of her which until a few minutes ago had been relatively neutral.