Sandra Day O’Connor Spoke Approvingly Of Race Shaping Thurgood Marshall’s Judging

[Are_grits_groceries]

A source sends over the full tribute that Sandra Day O’Connor, Ronald Reagan’s appointee to the Supreme Court in 1991, delivered to legendary Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1992, after his retirement.

In it, O’Connor actually spoke approvingly of the ways in which Marshall’s race-based experiences shaped his jurisprudence and even influenced her own legal thinking — almost exactly what conservatives are attacking Sonia Sotomayor for saying about herself in her now-infamous 2001 speech.

Here’s the key passage:

Like most of my counterparts who grew up in the Southwest in the 1930s and 1940s, I had not been personally exposed to racial tensions before Brown; Arizona did not have a large African American population then, and unlike southern States, it never adopted a de jure system of segregation. Although I had spend a year as an eighth grader in a predominately Latino public school in New Mexico, I had no personal sense, as the plaintiff children of Topeka School District did, of being a minority in a society that cared primarily for the majority.

But as I listened that day to Justice Marshall talk eloquently to the media about the social stigmas and lost opportunities suffered by African American children in state-imposed segregated school, my awareness of race-based disparities deepened. I did not, could not, know it then, but the man who would, as a lawyer and jurist, captivate the nation would also, as colleague and friend, profoundly influence me.

Although all of us come to the Court with our own personal histories and experiences, Justice Marshall brought a special perspective. His was the eye of a lawyer who saw the deepest wounds in the social fabric and used law to help heal them. His was the ear of a counselor who understood the vulnerabilities of the accused and established safeguards for their protection. His was the mouth of a man who knew the anguish of the silenced and gave them a voice.

At oral arguments and conference meetings, in opinions and dissents, Justice Marshall imparted not only his legal acumen but also his life experiences, constantly pushing and prodding us to respond not only to the persuasiveness of legal argument but also to the power of moral truth.

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/supreme-court/sandra-day-oconnor-spoke-approvingly-of-race-shaping-thurgood-marshalls-judging/

They are probably afraid that Sotomayor will change somebody. I seriously doubt if Scalis or Thomas could be changed, and Scalia has been a shaping force himself on the court.