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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review July 3, 2009 / 11 Tamuz 5769

Sotomayor and Quotas

By Linda Chavez


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The Supreme Court's decision this week in the New Haven firefighters case may cause problems for its newest prospective member, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. The court found in favor of a group of white and Hispanic firefighters who were denied promotions despite having passed the city's promotion exams with flying colors. The city threw out the test results because no black firefighters scored high enough to win promotions, and Judge Sotomayor sided with the city when the case came to her on the Second Circuit.


Appellate judges often get reversed by the Supreme Court, but this reversal could prove more troublesome to Sotomayor. She has made it clear in a series of speeches over the years that she considers her own ethnic identity crucial to how she decides cases. No fewer than a half-dozen times, Sotomayor has uttered some variation of her now infamous remarks, delivered in a 2001 speech at the University of California at Berkeley, "that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." Her comments were no mere gaffe but a studied description of her views on the importance of race and ethnicity to her role as a judge.


In the same Berkeley speech, Sotomayor decried the "underrepresentation" of Hispanics on the bench: "we have only 10 out of 147 active Circuit Court judges and 30 out of 587 active district court judges. Those numbers are grossly below our proportion of the population." But as Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, noted recently on National Review Online, even if you want to play the quota game, Sotomayor's objections are dicey. Federal judges are lawyers (with rare historical exceptions on the Supreme Court), and only 3.4 percent were Hispanics in 2000, according to the American Bar Association. Yet Hispanics make up about 5 percent of district court judges and more than 6 percent of appellate judges.


Sotomayor's insistence that population numbers be the reference point, not those actually qualified to assume the job, is a clue to just how committed to quotas she is. For years, affirmative action proponents have claimed that they are not advocating quotas. But their reticence has more to do with public relations than policy. The whole idea that some racial or ethnic groups are "underrepresented" in employment or education implies that proportional representation is the goal. And if there are "underrepresented" groups, there must also be "overrepresented" groups.


In this game, if there are too few blacks and Hispanics who are lawyers or engineers or doctors, there must be too many whites or Asians or Jews who occupy those positions. And who decides how many is too many? Does race or ethnicity entitle someone to representation in every field and at every level? Clearly the city of New Haven thought so, and it appears Judge Sotomayor agreed.


The Senate Judiciary Committee takes up Sotomayor's nomination July 13. The committee should press her on her views about proportional representation — and not let her get away with the usual demurral on quotas. Do our civil rights laws guarantee equal opportunity or equal results? If the former, how does she justify throwing out test results that don't happen to conform to her idea of what the racial makeup of the officer ranks in a fire department should be? If test results consistently thwart promotion of minorities, should we abandon testing altogether? What are the limits of her own preference for groupthink? Should we be interested in promoting individual rights or group rights, especially when the latter interferes with the former?


Every one of the New Haven firefighters who wanted to be promoted to lieutenant or captain took the identical tests and had access to the same study materials provided by the department. The exam had been meticulously designed to test the actual skills and knowledge required on the job and to have no cultural biases. Some firefighters succeeded and others failed, based not on their race or ethnicity but on their effort and abilities.


During the original debate over the Civil Rights Act of 1964, proponents argued that it would never be used to require racial preferences or proportional representation. Americans deserve to know whether Judge Sotomayor agrees.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)

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