The Scalia – Sotomayor Thunderdome

[DCPatriot]

The Scalia – Sotomayor Thunderdome
by Jazz Shaw




Ed already brought you up to date on the SCOTUS decision regarding the Michigan referendum that ended affirmative action in college admissions, so if you happened to miss the story, read that first. It was one of the more raucous decisions in a while, with plenty of twists and turns in terms of who went with the majority or the dissent and what they said. But the Washington Examiner dug a bit deeper later in the day, finding what amounted to a bit of a slug-fest in the footnotes between Sonia Sotomayor and Antonin Scalia.

The scuffle erupted over Sotomayor’s not so thinly veiled inference that the hateful majority of voters in Michigan must be a bunch of blazing cat fur racists. Going one step further, she even invoked Jim Crow laws in her comments. Scalia was not exactly charitable in his response.

    “As Justice Harlan observed over a century ago, ‘

• ur Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,’” Scalia concluded, quoting the dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson. “The people of Michigan wish the same for their governing charter. It would be shameful for us to stand in their way.”

    And then, the Parthian shot: “And doubly shameful to equate ‘the majority’ behind [the constitutional amendment] with ‘the majority’ responsible for Jim Crow,” he added in a final footnote, citing the first two pages of Sotomayor’s dissent.

I realize that such comments aren’t exactly on par with a WWE wrestler jumping out of the ring to grab a folding chair, but by the standards of Supreme Court written opinions, it’s not far off. Still, reading Sotomayor’s comments leaves us with some unsettling questions.

First of all, allow me to say that I’m as thrilled as the next guy to finally have a Wise Latina on the court and all, but is this really the level of discourse we can expect to see enshrined in the official records of our nation’s highest court for the next several decades? Invoking Jim Crow here should be a serious red flag for any observer, and even one of the other liberal justices bailed out on her on that one. I assume Justice Sotomayor was actually present in the Court when the arguments were being made and was aware of the substance of the referendum in question. We’re not talking about voting rights for minorities here, nor freedom of speech or religion. This was about college admissions. (Which, to be brutally honest, isn’t a constitutionally assured right for anyone.)

more at:   http://hotair.com/archives/2014/04/22/the-scalia-sotomayor-thunderdome/

[Luis Gonzalez]

First of all, allow me to say that I’m as thrilled as the next guy to finally have a Wise Latina on the court and all

The man has obviously never known a Latina intimately.

Scalia is about to find out that to Sotomayor, he may as well be her husband who just got caught boinging the next door neighbor's 22 year-old illegal Dominican maid.

[massadvj]

Personally, I am not "disappointed" in Sotomayer.  Her opinion in this case comports fully with my expectations of her.

[PzLdr]

Sotomayor was an idiot on the Federal bench in New York. For anyone to have expected better of her on the USSC is a joke. She got there because she was a political hack, and a legal dim bulb, with the right genome.

[jmyrlefuller]

Sotomayor was an idiot on the Federal bench in New York. For anyone to have expected better of her on the USSC is a joke. She got there because she was a political hack, and a legal dim bulb, with the right genome.

She's an Obama nominee. It's pretty much what ANYONE expected of her.

[DCPatriot]

It's amazing that our very freedoms and Constitution as we know it today are at risk.

All depends on who's sitting in the Oval Office and who controls both Houses.

Since it happened before....in 2000 and 2004...the pendulum can certainly swing in the Left's favor.

Think about that for just a moment....Alito, Thomas, Scalia and Roberts should ALL have personal tasters.

[Oceander]

Scalia put it about as plainly and simply as the matter could ever be put:

It has come to this.  Called upon to explore the jurisprudential twilight zone between two errant lines of precedent, we confront a frighteningly bizarre question:  Does the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment  forbid what its text plainly requires?