LyrArc Article Gist
Stephen Carter at Yale Law School, and Sonia Sotomayor on the Appeals Court of New York, share the idea that a judges's experiences will have an impact on what and how he or she see things, and there is virtue in that impact. And those individual experiences are unique to that person, what makes her who she is , and are to some extent idiosyncratic or special to that person. This adds to the law rather than than detracts from it, by adding to the richness of experience. If the life of the law is experience and it is informed by it, then the richness of experiences on the bench only add to the richness of insight brought to bear in making the decision. Sotomayor explains this in the light of her own experiences, but others could have done so also. And no two women are the same. Justice O'Connor's experiences growing up in the frontier on an Arizona ranch and taking part in ranch activities are just unique, there is just no one like her in the supreme court past and present. The same is true of this Newyorkican (puertorican form the Bronx). These individual experiences temper the sense of shared perception of womanhood, and criss cross over cultural lines in so may ways, that there is no typical black, no typical white and no typical Hispanic, especially in today's heterogenous mix of communities in America. Try a Puerto Rican who can't speak Spanish and doesn't know what tacos are like.