TJP

Culture and Ethics Influence Decisions

Byron A. Ellis – July 15, 2009

The Republican argument against Judge Sotomayor is disingenuous and will not serve them well. Apparently, in their worldview judges are unbiased and culture and ethics do not influence deliberations.

Culture, in this context, is the behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group and ethics is the tradition and belief that have evolved over time.

Republicans claim that Sotomayor’s “Wise Latina” comment implies that she is not impartial. However, her rulings do not show partiality. The indirect Republican argument is that Supreme Court jurist are impartial.

However, history invalidates such arguments, rather it validates the bias white Courts as far back as Dred Scott v Sandford (1857) or Plessy v Ferguson (1896).

In Dred Scott v Sandford white men ruled that people of African descent imported in the United Sates and held as slaves, or their descendants, even if they were not slaves, were not legal persons and could never become citizens of the United States. In Plessy v Fergusson they ruled that a Louisiana law mandating separate but equal accommodations for blacks and whites on intrastate railroads was constitutional.

Did they interpret the Constitution or their biases?

These rulings as well as many contemporaneous rulings by white judges have severely impacted the ability of black and brown people to build generational wealth.

Even today, white culture and ethics prevail in the judicial system and elsewhere; and this prevalence has excluded black and browns from equal participating in the larger society.

Moreover, laws have been brought into being that unequally penalizes black and brown people. Senator Byron Dorgan acknowledged during Sotomayor’s hearing that the Crack Cocaine Law unfairly penalizes minorities. Thus, we should be also looking for diversity in the Senate, which would mitigate the crafting of unfair laws

It is a Republican fiction to argue that the judges on the Supreme Court are free from bias and interpret of the Constitution (laws) equally. If culture and experiences did not influence their interpretation of the law, they would always come to the same decisions; all decisions would be unanimous. But, that is not the case.

It is important to seat Sotomayor and other non-whites on the Supreme Court to give it balance and validity with the impending new American demographics. Otherwise, the new constituency will have no compelling reason to believe that procedural justice exists in the United States. And, when there is no confidence in the justice system, it will collapse.

Sotomayor is a mainstream jurist and as well qualified as all the white men seated on the Supreme Court.

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