Comments on: Achieving a More Diverse Supreme Court

By: spicyplumchatni

spicyplumchatni — Tue, 05 May 2009 15:40:18 +0000

I don’t have much to add, except that I was at the MPSA Panel when they presented this paper. The methodological issues are the ones that got critiqued the most. We can’t run this as an experiment. It is not possible to determine how the the all-male panel would have decided on a discrimination case, and then compare it to how they decide the same case when women are present on the bench. One of the fundamental causal questions is; do male and female judges decide differently? Or is it their ideologies that determine decision-making? So basically which has more wight at the judicial level – sex or ideology? Empirically, I don’t think this question can be answered satisfactorily. I am still learning their statistical method of matching to understand their theory.
I am supposed to review an article by a Prof. who is looking at the Canadian courts to determine this – according to him after there are a certain number of women on the bench, decision-making is supposed to converge. Last I heard, their results weren’t corresponding to the theory. It should be interesting to compare Canadian and U.S. courts in this regard.

By: kithkin

kithkin — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:43:15 +0000

Ugh. Also also. Please forgive me my redundancies, I’ve been up a long time, too.

By: kithkin

kithkin — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:42:18 +0000

JD: I hadn’t heard it put just that way, but so right on about the epistemological thing. It’s the reason I forced myself to keep going into a filthy, homophobic, misogynistic environment (for “fun”! On weekends!) for months: maybe I could shame these sexists and homophones into toning it down. It never worked. My respect for RBG grew even deeper the day I resolved to stop going back there after only a few months and she’d been on SCOTUSA (dudelier and more stressful by far) for years.

And I promise to stop being such a cheerleader for Kathleen Sullivan sometime in this lifetime, but she would also be the Court’s first openly gay Justice also, yes? Another civilizing force, coming at an important time for marriage equality challenges.

By: Kivrin

Kivrin — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:30:28 +0000

Look at you, J.D. Regent, seeing a sliver of goodness in the Supreme Court’s heart of darkness! I have yet to see it myself. I can’t imagine working for that man…

Obama’d better pick a woman. Seriously.

By: J.D.Regent

J.D.Regent — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:22:51 +0000

And I just feel it is beyond the point of being able to reason with them. It is like a cultural difference; they just need to absorb it and to feel smaller and to experience for one second of their lives the experience of not being the loudest, most dominant, safest, richest, smartest, most legal, powerful voice in the fucking room. It’s like, immersion therapy. I sort of want to bring the Catholic 5 (I think of them like horror story opposite day Jackson 5) to a retreat and do some rebirth therapy with them or something. I actually believe that Scalia could have a late life epiphany, I believe he has that capacity somewhere deep in his perverted, oily heart. I used to play with the idea of trying to be his token liberal clerk (he has one every year). But, my grades weren’t that good. And, I would shoot myself if I had to be a clerk. And, I’m TOTALLY OVER investing any energy in converting gross conservative men. But someone should do it. Perhaps the presence of a new Latina Supreme Court Justice will sufficiently shame them into behaving better. (P.S. Did fucking Scalia and Breyer snicker about bras and panties IN FRONT OF Ginsberg??? Can you even imagine the gall? Maybe these men are shameless.)

I’ve been awake for a long, long time. I apologize for my nonsensical tirades.

By: Pilgrim Soul

Pilgrim Soul — Tue, 05 May 2009 00:17:49 +0000

JD, I so totally agree with epistemological thing. I’ve been feeling really bad for la Ginsburg on that score. That panty sniffing hearing Sarah covered awhile back must have been excruciating for her.

By: J.D.Regent

J.D.Regent — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:56:29 +0000

I was always taught in school that a major function of Affirmative Action was to provide a cultural intervention on the ruling class, whose ideology was unable otherwise to progress beyond a narrow racist, sexist worldview. You know, like an epistemological, not just sociological intervention. Even though it does get wearying being the entire civilizing force in the world.