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- Title
ANTICIPATING THE WISE LATINA JUDGE.
- Authors
CHEW, PAT K.
- Abstract
Sonia Sotomayor's famous "wise Latina" quote provoked a conservative critique. The first part of the critique proposes that Judge Sotomayor's gender and racial background would affect her judicial decision making. The second part fears that her Latina background would result in bias, prejudice, and unfair judicial decisions. This Essay explores this conservative critique and discusses it more generally. It reviews the realism model of judicial decision making, social science research on salience theory, and empirical research on judges' race and gender--ultimately concluding that the first part of the conservative critique is correct: judges' gender and racial backgrounds affect their decision making, at least in some cases. The Essay, however, discusses why the second part of the critique is problematic. It argues that we should have the same positive associations, and the same anticipation of judicial insights, about judges' gender and racial backgrounds that we do about the other biographical details of judges' backgrounds. It suggests that judges engaging in "deep analysis" of alternative gender and racial perspectives would move them toward empathic understanding rather than fear of bias, prejudice, and unfair results.
- Subjects
UNITED States; SOTOMAYOR, Sonia, 1954-; HISPANIC American women; GENDER &; society; CONSERVATIVES; RACE &; society; WOMEN judges; BIAS (Law); JUDICIAL process; ATTITUDE (Psychology); JUDICIAL process -- Social aspects
- Publication
Denver University Law Review, 2014, Vol 91, Issue 4, p853
- ISSN
0883-9409
- Publication type
Essay