Ginsburg Defends Sotomayor

Ginsburg Calls ‘Wise Latina’ Flap Ridiculous

By Debra Cassens Weiss

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg thinks it’s ridiculous for critics to make a big deal about the “wise Latina” comment by Sonia Sotomayor, the federal appeals judge nominated to join Ginsburg as a second female justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a New York Times interview, Ginsburg delved into the controversy over a 2001 appearance by Sotomayor in which she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Interviewer: “Did you think that all the attention to the criticism of Sotomayor as being ‘bullying’ or not as smart is sex-inflected? Does that have to do with the rarity of a woman in her position, and the particular challenges?"

Ginsburg: “I can’t say that it was just that she was a woman. There are some people in Congress who would criticize severely anyone President Obama nominated. They’ll seize on any handle. One is that she’s a woman, another is that she made the remark about Latina women. And I thought it was ridiculous for them to make a big deal out of that. Think of how many times you’ve said something that you didn’t get out quite right, and you would edit your statement if you could. I’m sure she meant no more than what I mean when I say: Yes, women bring a different life experience to the table. All of our differences make the conference better. That I’m a woman, that’s part of it, that I’m Jewish, that’s part of it, that I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., and I went to summer camp in the Adirondacks, all these things are part of me.

“Once Justice O’Connor was questioning counsel at oral argument. I thought she was done, so I asked a question, and Sandra said: Just a minute, I’m not finished. So I apologized to her and she said, It’s OK, Ruth. The guys do it to each other all the time, they step on each other’s questions. And then there appeared an item in USA Today, and the headline was something like ‘Rude Ruth Interrupts Sandra.' ”

Interviewer: “It seemed to me that male judges do much more abrasive things all the time, and it goes unremarked.”

Ginsburg: “Yes, the notion that Sonia is an aggressive questioner—what else is new? Has anybody watched Scalia or Breyer up on the bench?”

Interviewer: “She’ll fit right in?”

Ginsburg: “She’ll hold her own.”

Ginsburg also responded to a question about Sotomayor’s claim that she is a product of affirmative action. Ginsburg said she has benefited too, becoming the first tenured woman at Columbia law school because of affirmative-action pressure from the Nixon administration. She added that it’s important for feminists to work with men: “If you’re going to change things, you have to be with the people who hold the levers,” she told the interviewer.

Ginsburg told the interviewer that she is “doubtful” about academic studies finding a difference in the way male and female judges of similar ideologies vote in some cases. But she appeared to waffle when the interviewer asked what the U.S. Supreme Court would be like if three or four women were justices.

Asked if the results might be different in discrimination cases, Ginsburg gave this answer: “I think for the most part, yes. I would suspect that, because the women will relate to their own experiences.”

Ginsburg also touched on Roe v. Wade in the interview, saying she believes the right to abortion will one day be rooted in the constitutional right to sex equality. If she were a lawyer, rather than a justice, reproductive choice would be on her legal agenda, she said.

In another part of the interview, Ginsburg reveals the truth behind a newspaper account that told of her taking a long time to rise from the bench. “They worried, was I frail?” Ginsburg said. “To be truthful I had kicked off my shoes, and I couldn’t find my right shoe; it traveled way underneath.”