Sotormayor Likes Her "Poor" Choice of Words
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“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001
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Greg Sargent reports she made an almost identical remark in 1994:
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“Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that “a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same conclusion in dueling cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes the line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, if Prof. Martha Minnow is correct, there can never be a universal definition of ‘wise.’ Second, I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experience would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion.”
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When Sotomayor's 2001 remarks first came to light, Robert Gibbs responded to the criticism by speaking on behalf of Sotomayor, saying
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“I think she’d say that her word choice in 2001 was poor.”
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President Obama weighed in as well,
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"I'm sure she would have restated it"
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Well, it turns out that she was restating it in her 2001 speech, except the richness of her experience between 1994 and 2001 apparently led her to the better conclusion that being a wise woman isn't quite as impressive as being a wise Latina woman.
Obviously Obama and Gibbs were being completely dishonest when they said she would have rephrased or restated her remarks if she had it to do over again, and you can hardly fault them for it -- what else were they going to say? But now it's clear that these remarks were not a one-off, that Sotomayor believes this so strongly, and that she believes her formulation is so clever, that she would repeat it in almost precisely the same manner nearly a decade later. The White House will need to help Sotomayor come up with a new defense for her remarks before any hearings begin. The poor choice of words defense is no longer operative.