Sonia Sotomayor is going to be confirmed as our newest Supreme Court justice. There’s little doubt about that—the votes are there. But Congress is going through the motions with these hearings anyway.
One thing that’s come up again is this issue of whether a justice should be “empathetic.” Obama first floated this thought back on July 17, 2007, at a Planned Parenthood conference, saying a Supreme Court justice should be someone “who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria.
