As a prosecutor, litigator, and trial and appellate judge, Judge Sotomayor brings more federal judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice in 100 years, and more overall judicial experience than anyone confirmed for the Court in the past 70 years.

We applaud President Obama on his successful nomination and laud this momentous step forward for the Court and our country.

Share with us your thoughts about our newest Justice at ConfirmSotomayor.org.

Judge Sotomayor’s nomination and confirmation will be among our discussion topics at a Netroots Nation panel next week at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pa.

EJS is coordinating a session on “The Myth of Post-Racial America” on Thursday, August 13, from 9 a.m. to 10:15 a.m.

Panelists include Rinku Sen, President and Executive Director of the Applied Research Center (ARC); Rich Benjamin, Senior Fellow at DEMOS; Annabel Park, director/producer of the upcoming documentary film “9500 Liberty” and moderated by Keith Kamisugi, EJS Director of Communications.

Save the session date and info on Facebook.

“Empathy for one party is always prejudice against another.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions, fervid critic of Judge Sonia Sotomayor and President Barack Obama, uttered these startling words in the first hour of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings for Sotomayor’s elevation to the U.S. Supreme Court.

As professors who strive to teach students that the understanding of texts and of life is deeply enriched by ethical principles of empathy, conscience and compassion, we were left aghast by the empathy-bashing on national television.

What is empathy, and why are Sessions and other conservative Senators saying such terrible things about it?

Empathy is commonly defined as the ability to imagine, identify with, and potentially share another’s experiences, perspectives and feelings. It is about process, rather than result, and about intellect as well as emotion.

Given that all of us are both shaped and limited by our lived experiences, how can we engage in effective dialogue, debate and analysis unless we try to comprehend how others think and feel?

Empathy is not a trendy or new-fangled invention of Obama, Sotomayor or even contemporary American culture.

Its rich intellectual tradition includes giants of Western political thought like John Stuart Mill, who argued in “On Liberty” that we must understand others’ points of view, right or wrong, to understand, clarify, and, if need be, correct our own positions.

The 19th century British poet Percy Shelley argued that a person, “to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively” and must “put himself [or herself] in the place of another and of many others.”

Simplistic equations of empathy with bias woefully misinterpret the nature of both concepts. Genuine empathy requires crossing boundaries of identity and circumstance to find common overarching truths.

Bias stems from the refusal to acknowledge that our world-view is in part limited by our own experiences. Education is one way to eliminate such bias and limitation, and empathy is another. In literature, law and life, the exercise of empathy enlarges our capacity to appreciate and understand the narratives and perspectives of others unlike ourselves.

For judges — especially those who serve on the highest court in the land — the quality of empathy can be an antidote to prejudice, rather than evidence of it. Diversity of backgrounds and life experiences among the nine members of the Supreme Court will increase the likelihood that doctrinally and ethically rigorous exchanges will occur.

The noted legal thinker and Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience. “… [L]aw cannot be dealt with as if it contained only the axioms and corollaries of a book of mathematics.”

Even before he nominated Judge Sotomayor, President Obama created controversy by stating that he considered “the quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people’s hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”

Yet, he was not advocating this so-called empathy standard as the sole or primary criterion for appointment of Supreme Court justices.

Clearly, serving on the highest court in the land requires an exceptional legal mind and record, but also the wisdom to know that empathy is a strength rather than a weakness.

Margaret Russell, an Oakland resident, is a professor of Constitutional Law at Santa Clara University, and board member of the Equal Justice Society and the ACLU. Marilyn Edelstein is an associate professor of English at Santa Clara University.

EJS is coordinating a session on “The Myth of Post-Racial America” on Thursday, August 13, from 9 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. Panelists include Rinku Sen, President and Executive Director of the Applied Research Center (ARC); Rich Benjamin, Senior Fellow at DEMOS; Annabel Park, director/producer of the upcoming documentary film “9500 Liberty” and moderated by Keith Kamisugi, EJS Director of Communications. Save the session date and info on Facebook.

Netroots Nation 2009 will include panels led by national and international experts; a progressive film screening series; practical training sessions and workshops; and the most concentrated gathering of progressive bloggers to date.

Past gatherings have included a Presidential Leadership Forum that drew seven Democratic candidates, a surprise visit from Al Gore; an interactive Ask the Speaker session with Nancy Pelosi; and hundreds of panels, roundtables, training sessions, workshops and keynotes.

Contact Keith Kamisugi (kkamisugi@equaljusticesociety.org) for more information on this session or the conference.

Scholarships Available for Bloggers Covering Immigration Issues

As progressives across the country begin strategizing and organizing around comprehensive immigration reform, there’s no better place to connect than this summer’s Netroots Nation convention. With nearly 100 training sessions and panels to choose from, it’s vital that those who write about immigration are well-represented in Pittsburgh.

Do you know someone working at the intersection of new media and immigration, who blogs on the issue, and who needs some help getting to Netroots Nation? If so, tell them to apply for a scholarship!

This year, America’s Voice, an organization committed to supporting a vibrant and independent pro-migrant blogosphere, will send eight immigration bloggers to Pittsburgh to attend the convention. The scholarship includes registration, a travel stipend and shared hotel accommodations.

The America’s Voice and Netroots Nation scholarship selection committee will rely on several unique factors to select contest winners. Above all, we are interested in hearing your personal story and your personal connection to the issue, what drives your work, and why you would like to attend Netroots Nation.

It’s also important that we select people who are not only passionate about blogging and/or online activism, but who bring a unique and underrepresented perspective to the Netroots Nation convention.

The answers that you submit in your application are private, but if selected as a winner, we may ask to publish some of your answers on our website.

Apply now to be a America’s Voice/Netroots Nation 2009 Scholar.

Since time is short and we want to let winners make their travel arrangements, all applications are due by Monday, July 20. Selections will be posted online by August 1, but winners will be contacted via email as soon as they are selected.

“Continuing its assault on our civil rights laws, the five conservative ideologues on the Supreme Court today rejected long-standing law to weaken Title VII protections for traditional victims of discrimination,” said Aron.

Before the Court issued its ruling, People For the American Way Executive Vice President Marge Baker said that: “Opponents of Judge Sotomayor have gone to great lengths to use the ruling of her panel in Ricci v. DeStefano against her, and they will surely ramp up their efforts if the Supreme Court overturns the Second Circuit. But the simple fact is that the Supreme Court’s ruling, whatever it may be, will not reflect upon Sotomayor’s jurisprudence.

“Sotomayor and her panel colleagues were bound by longstanding precedent and federal law. They applied the law without regard to their personal views and unanimously affirmed the district court ruling. To do anything but would have been judicial activism.

“The full Second Circuit backed up the panel, which came as no surprise. Nearly ten years earlier a Second Circuit panel — consisting of three GOP nominees — reached the same conclusion in a similar case (Hayden v. County of Nassau).

“When a case virtually identical to Ricci came before the Sixth Circuit — Oakley v. Memphis — a panel rejected the plaintiffs’ claims and affirmed the district court ruling. Notably, they did so in an unpublished summary order, and one of the three judges was conservative Bush nominee Richard Allen Griffin.

“In other words, Sotomayor is anything but an outlier. She and the seven other federal judges who decided Ricci and Oakley at the district and circuit levels were unanimous in determining that precedent and federal law required the rejection of the suits.”

It depicts Judge Sotomayor strung up by a rope, likening itself to lynching images or a piñata, with President Barack Obama wearing a sombrero, holding a stick and asking a crowd of elephants (Republicans) “Now, who wants to be first?”

The cartoon is captioned “Fiesta time at the confirmation hearing.” See the cartoon here on our ConfirmSotomayor.org blog.

Piñatas are actually of Mexican tradition and Judge Sotomayor is of Puerto Rican descent. Clearly, either the artist confused his stereotypes or sees the Latino community as one homogenous race without distinction.

Too much damage has been done to our communities under the guise of “satire” and this recent publication marches to the same drum as did the cartoon of the chimp in the New York Post and the Danish cartoon depicting Mohammed as a terrorist.

We’ve re-posted below a statement from Jean Warner, chair of the Oklahoma Women’s Coalition, in response to the vicious editorial cartoon.

Please read Ms. Warner’s post and write to the publisher of the newspaper (see end of the post).”

Regarding today’s political cartoon in the OKC paper: What was The Oklahoman thinking?

Oklahoma ranks as the 3rd worst state in the nation for women.

Much of what holds Oklahoma women and girls back is linked to our state’s culture of violence and disresepct for women. Oklahoma ranks #4 in women murdered by men, #1 in child abuse and our domestic violence shelters are full of women escaping violence.

So The Oklahoman today runs a cartoon showing Sonia Sotomayor – a brilliant Hispanic woman scholar, lawyer and judge – strung up by a rope while men with clubs prepare to have at her for believing she’s qualified to serve on the US. Supreme Court.

Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, received a JD from Yale Law School where she was an editor at the Yale Law Journal (but she grew up in the projects; obviously “that girl doesn’t know her place” – right? wink, wink). President George H.W. Bush nominated her to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York where she served with distinction (but she’s a woman and, worst yet, ambitious – right? wink, wink). She’s served on the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit for 10 years, heard over 3,000 cases and written over 380 opinions (but she’s of Puerto Rican descent ~~ ergo the piñata image – right? wink, wink).

Not funny; actually stupid and damaging. A picture speaks louder than words and that cartoon sends a message to women of all ages: “Back off. Know your place. Or we’ll take a stick to you and teach you a lesson.”

Shame on The Oklahoman and its publisher, David Thompson!

Write to publisher David Thompson, let him know this kind of journalism is irresponsible and demand a retraction

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