There was a very curious piece of commentary on cnn.com this morning, written by Abigail Thernstrom, who is on the U. S. Commission on Civil Rights and is associated with the Manhattan Institute and the American Enterprise Institute. The latter two associations would seem to put her clearly in the neocon camp, as do her conclusions about Sotomayor.
Thernstrom's conclusions are subtle and insidious:
Sotomayor will replace another reliable liberal, Justice David Souter, and so the ideological balance on the court will not change. And yet, perhaps as a consequence of her implicit embrace of quotas and identity politics, she has come to the Senate hearings with public support that is unusually low; only 47 percent of Americans say they want her confirmed, a recent CNN poll found.
Nevertheless, Republicans are likely to tread softly in the hearings. Race-related issues make them nervous, and Latinos are a fast-growing group with increasing political clout, especially in such swing states as Colorado, Florida, New Mexico and Virginia.
Barring the totally unexpected, Sotomayor's confirmation will thus be a cakewalk. Let us hope that the public's pessimism proves to be misguided and she turns out to be a lawyer's lawyer and not an ethnic activist who tends to let the usual political definition of "empathy" drive her opinions. There is reason to worry: She will have lifetime tenure on an institution with enormous power.
Like Senator Sessions, and most people I encounter, she suffers from the assumption that only "minorities" are invovled in "identity politics"' and that white men are, by definition, neutral and ojective. This presumption is easy to maintain for one simple reason. White men (and I am one) have had 1500 years of affirmative action, and the world is set up to benefit them. Therefore, maintenance of the status quo is white, male identity politics, but it stays well disguised because it is, well, maintenance of the status quo. Any change of the status quo will always look like identity politics of some group other than white males, and these arguments will stand out and be obvious because they involve change in the status quo.
That aside, Thernstrom brought up one important point that I had not recognized until I read it in her commentary.
Supporters of Sotomayor argue that she will add needed "diversity" to the Court. Yet, with her confirmation, there will be six Catholics, two Jews and one Protestant. For many Americans, religious affiliation is more important in defining an individual than race or ethnicity. But no one is complaining about "too many" Catholics or Jews -- thankfully.
Now, I don't think one's religious background should determine their fitness for the Supreme Court, but this is at least a curiosity. Six Roman Catholics!
Scalia
Alito
Thomas
Kennedy
Roberts
(Sotomayor)
She would also make the fourth Catholic in a row appointed to the court. It could just be a conicidence, but it seems so unlikely. I have no objections to there being six Catholics on the court, but I suspect that this may say something very important about the court, though I am not sure what it is. I would welcome the thoughts of others on this observation.