Bryan Fischer
Sotomayor automatically disqualified: cannot fulfill her oath of office
By Bryan Fischer
The Judeo-Christian tradition, on which Western jurisprudence rests, is quite clear about the obligation of judges. "You shall do no injustice in court," says Israel's civil code (Lev. 19:15).
The text goes on: "You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor." (emphasis mine) In other words, partiality either to the poor or to the rich in court is the very definition of injustice.
This is exacty why Lady Justice wears a blindfold. Justice cannot be influenced by either poverty, race or wealth and be justice. It must, says the Scripture, be impartial.
This principle creates insurmountable obstacles to any possibility of conservative support for Sonia Sotomayor.
For Ms. Sotomayor, President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, is both a racist and a sexist. She insists that her status as a Latina woman makes her inherently superior to white males, and that because of this she would "more often than not reach a better conclusion" than people of pallor who wear judicial robes.
She further claims that the ethnicity and sex of a judge "may and will make a difference in our judging."
But the motto over the entrance to the very Supreme Court where she wants to work reads "equal justice under the law." Not more justice for the poor and less justice for the rich, nor more justice for certain races and less for others.
The very oath she will take if confirmed requires her to swear that "I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me ... under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God." (emphasis mine)
The bottom line here is that she is disqualified for the office before a single hearing ever takes place. By her own admission, by words that have come from her own mouth, she will resolutely refuse to keep her oath of office.
If there ever was a place for a litmus test in selecting Supreme Court justices, the willingness and ability to keep an oath sworn in the presence of God would be it. She dismally fails this most basic test.
You will notice that the oath of office says nothing about "empathy" but a lot about "impartiality," the most basic requirement in a court of law.
We have enough unvarnished racism in the United States as it is without appointing an out and proud racist to the Supreme Court.
Example: Columnist Steve Milloy tells the story of a friend, a white man who teaches in an inner-city school in southern California with an almost entirely Hispanic student body. When a classroom poll revealed that the parents of every single student in his classes was going to vote for Obama, he asked one 10-year-old Hispanic girl after class why her parents were voting for Obama. Her answer came in four chilling words: "Because he's not white."
Conservatives must unhesitatingly, unwaveringly and vigorously oppose her nomination, on the simple grounds that there is no room for racism, sexism and favoritism in the Supreme Court of the United States.
SOTOMAYOR'S DISMAL RECORD AS A JUDGE
The more we discover about Ms. Sotomayor's judicial record, the worse things get.
She has been reversed 60% of the time her rulings have been reviewed by the United States Supreme Court, and she is likely to have another reversed next month when the Court issues its opinion in a case in which she made a blatantly racist ruling by denying promotions to whites who earned the promotions because, well, they were white.
I guess Obama's motto is "If you can't lick 'em, join 'em." It may be the only way she can improve her judicial batting average.
In addition to this race-based ruling, Sotomayor has issued other rulings that ought to raise fatal objections in those who believe in the rule of law.
She has ruled that the Second Amendment does not in fact grant an individual right to keep and bear arms, despite the Supreme Court's Heller ruling last year that compellingly said just the opposite. She bizarrely ruled that states can limit Second Amendment rights any way they want to, even though the Second Amendment guarantees to the "people" — which obviously include citizens living in the individual states — the right "to keep and bear arms."
Said a Second Amendment scholar, Sotomayor's opinions "demonstrate a profound hostility to Second Amendment rights," and adds, "[I]t is hard to see who someone who supports Second Amendment rights could vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor."
This alone should be enough to prompt Idaho's senators, Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, to vote against her confirmation.
She issued a ruling in a property rights case that, hard to believe, was even worse than the Supreme Court's Kelo decision. In Didden v. Village of Port Chester, she sided with government in what a Forbes columnist calls "about as naked an abuse of government power as could be imagined."
In Didden, a private individual, Greg Wasser, was granted zoning control over a redevelopment district. When Bart Didden came up with an idea to build a pharmacy on land he himself owned, Wasser tried to shake him down for $800,000 for permission to build.
When Didden refused to be extorted, Wasser got Didden's land condemned under eminent domain and went ahead and built a pharmacy on Didden's land himself. Sotomayor joined the rest of the Second Circuit in saying that everything Wasser and Port Chester did was just hunky-dory.
She ruled against religious freedom in a case involving the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a ruling which has made an organization called American Atheists "cautiously optimistic" that Sotomayor will continue her destruction of the First Amendment guarantees of religious liberty if she is confirmed.
She has proven to be an environmental extremist, ruling that power companies must protect fish "and other aquatic organisms" from being sucked into cooling vents no matter what the cost, completely ignoring the cost-benefit analysis that must accompany every environmental decision. The Supreme Court overruled Sotomayor's bone-headed ruling on April 1 of this year, saying tactfully that "the Court of Appeals was ... in error."
Bottom line once again: there is no room for racism, sexism, favoritism or activism on the U.S. Supreme Court. That means there is no room for Sonia Sotomayor. Period.
© Bryan Fischer
May 27, 2009
The Judeo-Christian tradition, on which Western jurisprudence rests, is quite clear about the obligation of judges. "You shall do no injustice in court," says Israel's civil code (Lev. 19:15).
The text goes on: "You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor." (emphasis mine) In other words, partiality either to the poor or to the rich in court is the very definition of injustice.
This is exacty why Lady Justice wears a blindfold. Justice cannot be influenced by either poverty, race or wealth and be justice. It must, says the Scripture, be impartial.
This principle creates insurmountable obstacles to any possibility of conservative support for Sonia Sotomayor.
For Ms. Sotomayor, President Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, is both a racist and a sexist. She insists that her status as a Latina woman makes her inherently superior to white males, and that because of this she would "more often than not reach a better conclusion" than people of pallor who wear judicial robes.
She further claims that the ethnicity and sex of a judge "may and will make a difference in our judging."
But the motto over the entrance to the very Supreme Court where she wants to work reads "equal justice under the law." Not more justice for the poor and less justice for the rich, nor more justice for certain races and less for others.
The very oath she will take if confirmed requires her to swear that "I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me ... under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God." (emphasis mine)
The bottom line here is that she is disqualified for the office before a single hearing ever takes place. By her own admission, by words that have come from her own mouth, she will resolutely refuse to keep her oath of office.
If there ever was a place for a litmus test in selecting Supreme Court justices, the willingness and ability to keep an oath sworn in the presence of God would be it. She dismally fails this most basic test.
You will notice that the oath of office says nothing about "empathy" but a lot about "impartiality," the most basic requirement in a court of law.
We have enough unvarnished racism in the United States as it is without appointing an out and proud racist to the Supreme Court.
Example: Columnist Steve Milloy tells the story of a friend, a white man who teaches in an inner-city school in southern California with an almost entirely Hispanic student body. When a classroom poll revealed that the parents of every single student in his classes was going to vote for Obama, he asked one 10-year-old Hispanic girl after class why her parents were voting for Obama. Her answer came in four chilling words: "Because he's not white."
Conservatives must unhesitatingly, unwaveringly and vigorously oppose her nomination, on the simple grounds that there is no room for racism, sexism and favoritism in the Supreme Court of the United States.
SOTOMAYOR'S DISMAL RECORD AS A JUDGE
The more we discover about Ms. Sotomayor's judicial record, the worse things get.
She has been reversed 60% of the time her rulings have been reviewed by the United States Supreme Court, and she is likely to have another reversed next month when the Court issues its opinion in a case in which she made a blatantly racist ruling by denying promotions to whites who earned the promotions because, well, they were white.
I guess Obama's motto is "If you can't lick 'em, join 'em." It may be the only way she can improve her judicial batting average.
In addition to this race-based ruling, Sotomayor has issued other rulings that ought to raise fatal objections in those who believe in the rule of law.
She has ruled that the Second Amendment does not in fact grant an individual right to keep and bear arms, despite the Supreme Court's Heller ruling last year that compellingly said just the opposite. She bizarrely ruled that states can limit Second Amendment rights any way they want to, even though the Second Amendment guarantees to the "people" — which obviously include citizens living in the individual states — the right "to keep and bear arms."
Said a Second Amendment scholar, Sotomayor's opinions "demonstrate a profound hostility to Second Amendment rights," and adds, "[I]t is hard to see who someone who supports Second Amendment rights could vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor."
This alone should be enough to prompt Idaho's senators, Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, to vote against her confirmation.
She issued a ruling in a property rights case that, hard to believe, was even worse than the Supreme Court's Kelo decision. In Didden v. Village of Port Chester, she sided with government in what a Forbes columnist calls "about as naked an abuse of government power as could be imagined."
In Didden, a private individual, Greg Wasser, was granted zoning control over a redevelopment district. When Bart Didden came up with an idea to build a pharmacy on land he himself owned, Wasser tried to shake him down for $800,000 for permission to build.
When Didden refused to be extorted, Wasser got Didden's land condemned under eminent domain and went ahead and built a pharmacy on Didden's land himself. Sotomayor joined the rest of the Second Circuit in saying that everything Wasser and Port Chester did was just hunky-dory.
She ruled against religious freedom in a case involving the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a ruling which has made an organization called American Atheists "cautiously optimistic" that Sotomayor will continue her destruction of the First Amendment guarantees of religious liberty if she is confirmed.
She has proven to be an environmental extremist, ruling that power companies must protect fish "and other aquatic organisms" from being sucked into cooling vents no matter what the cost, completely ignoring the cost-benefit analysis that must accompany every environmental decision. The Supreme Court overruled Sotomayor's bone-headed ruling on April 1 of this year, saying tactfully that "the Court of Appeals was ... in error."
Bottom line once again: there is no room for racism, sexism, favoritism or activism on the U.S. Supreme Court. That means there is no room for Sonia Sotomayor. Period.
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
