Sotomayor, President Obama and Standards for Judgment
By Eric Wallace, PhD
Watching the US Senate confirmation hearings as Senators questioned the judicial philosophy of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor reminded me of the recent issue of Freedom’s Journal Magazine entitled “Our Criminal Justice System: Cultivating Reform or Breeding Crime?” What follows are selected quotes from featured articles, which give readers relevant data concerning the social epidemic plaguing many of our minority communities; as well as to provide valuable insight into why so many view the Criminal Justice System (CJS) with a critical, yet subjective eye.
“Our imprisoned population of 2.3 million pushes us well beyond every other country, including China and Russia. A recent report from the Pew Center on the States revealed that one out of every 100 people in America is in prison or jail. For blacks, the ratio is even more sobering. One in every 9 black men ages 20-34 lives behind bars. If present trends of incarceration continue, one out of every three black males will spend time behind bars in their lifetime. This trend must stop.” Mark Early, President of Prison Fellowship from the article entitled Transforming Our Corrections System
“While blacks account for a mere 12 percent of the U.S. population, roughly 41 percent of the two million prison inmates are black. As of December 31, 2005, approximately 8.2 percent of black males between 25 and 29 were in state or federal prisons, versus 2.6 percent of Hispanic males and 1.1 percent of white males in the same age group.” Jimmie Hollis, with Project 21, from the article Black on Black Crime.
“In New York, African Americans and Latinos made up approximately 25 percent of the total population in the 1990s; but by 1999, as Dr. Marable reports, 83 percent of all prisoners and 94 percent of all individuals convicted on drug offenses in that state were from these two groups. There’s no doubt that many of those arrested and convicted were guilty as charged. But there’s also a pattern of racial bias, confirmed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which found that while African Americans make up about 14 percent of all drug users nationally, they accounted for 35 percent of all drug arrests, 55 percent of all drug convictions and 75 percent of all prison admissions for drug offenses.” By Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr. in Criminal Justice Reform.
Consequently, these statements (and others like them) are rapidly causing many to, at best, suspiciously question the “jurisprudence” of the CJS; or, at worst, to conclude that her legal duty has been reduced to nothing more than another form of oppression or modern day slavery. These statistics, if misread or misunderstood, might reasonably lead one to argue (as our president has) that we need more judges who will interpret law with ‘empathy’—or, at least, that those appointed express diversity of ‘life experiences’ or ability to make a decision from the ‘heart’. Unfortunately, these standards (or lack thereof) have, for far to long, undermined the minority community—often causing more harm than good. The reality is, the disproportionate conviction rates and sentencing are directly connected, in many cases, to judges (and others) who interpret the law subjectively. The law is not bias, people are—we all have biases. Add to the mix the mainstream media’s depiction and glorification of the ‘thug lifestyle’—many of these biases will continue to grow.
Therefore, what’s in one’s heart (their life experiences) often reflects these biases or fears. Judges are not immune to negative stereotypes. For example, we’ve all experienced the fear of having someone who is different from us to walk towards or behind us. Blacks and Whites alike have expressed contempt for young people who dress or look a certain way, listen to a certain type of music, or exhibit unfamiliar mannerisms.
However, the remedy is not more ‘ethnic’ judges to swing a bias justice system toward their community. Justice is not served by equalizing the balance of bias judges but by judges who will uphold the law regardless of the ethnicity of the person standing before them. The law is colorblind. It does not see black and white, red or yellow. Judge Sotomayor has proven that she does not understand this concept when she says her judgment would be better than a white male judge. No her judgment would just be bias in another direction. This was proved when she voted to throw out the test scores of the white fire fighters.
Obama’s standards for judges are also what got many blacks lynched post civil war when what was in judges hearts was hatred toward them. What their limited experience told them was that blacks were liars and cheats and deserved to be incarcerated. Obama and Sotomayor may do well to look to the foundation from which our law is based that admonishes us to lay our biases aside and, “ ‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly (Lev. 19:15; See also Deut 1:16; 16:18). We need judges to follow the law not their heart (biases).
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