If anyone, anyone, can turn John (pinocchio) Roberts into a real human being, I believe it would be Sonya Sotomayor.
I had read a little about this woman, but nothing prepared me for this dynamic presence grounded in strong human values that Republicans pay lip service to but do not really understand or espouse.
Republican sociopathy is rooted in a basic tenet of fascism...one achieves success by furthering the machine. Isn't that what George W Bush and Richard P Cheney practiced?
Robert's indifference to the lives of people in his mindless dedication to the nuts and bolts of the agenda of the corporate structure makes him unsuitable, IMO, to be a justice, able to understand the impact of his rulings on peoples' lives.
What an incredible powerful dynamic presence this woman has. The law is not a brittle, heartless, calculating machine. It's roots are in common law that has evolved over centuries.
Legal history or the history of law is the study of how law has evolved and why it changed. Legal history is closely connected to the development of civilizations and is set in the wider context of social history. Among certain jurists and historians of legal process it has been seen as the recording of the evolution of laws and the technical explanation of how these laws have evolved with the view of better understanding the origins of various legal concepts, some consider it a branch of intellectual history. Twentieth century historians have viewed legal history in a more contextualized manner more in line with the thinking of social historians. They have looked at legal institutions as complex systems of rules, players and symbols and have seen these elements interact with society to change, adapt, resist or promote certain aspects of civil society. Such legal historians have tended to analyze case histories from the parameters of social science inquiry, using statistical methods, analyzing class distinctions among litigants, petitioners and other players in various legal processes. By analyzing case outcomes, transaction costs, number of settled cases they have begun an analysis of legal institutions, practices, procedures and briefs that give us a more complex picture of law and society than the study of jurisprudence, case law and civil codes can achieve.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Right wing Republicans may try to deny it, but the law is rooted in human experience and is a prism through which we can view our history our culture and our values.
Justice Robert's disconnected almost vacant stare hints at his two dimentional perspective.
If anyone can awaken the complete human being in this man, I believe that the fully mature woman I heard today, who understands that the law is not a machine but a codified representation of who we are, Sonya Sotomayer can, if she is confirmed.
Right wing Republicans give lip service to these values but don't really understand them or believe in them as they discard them in favor of protecting the powerful.
If Justice Roberts is incapable of reaching this full human potential, at the very least Sonya Sotomayor, IMO, will, if she is confirmed, give others on the court the courage to stand up and be counted on assuring that the law represents everyone fairly.