Supreme Court needs a wise person, one wise woman at a time

BOSTON — So we face the riddle of the wise old man, the wise old woman and the wise old person.

Sonia Sotomayor, Bronx-raised and Ivy League-educated "Newyorkrican," has been nominated to the Supreme Court. What a difference since Ronald Reagan had to reach into a state appeals court to find his "first." Today the most experienced candidate is the diversity candidate.

Unable to attack her credentials, opponents instantly highlighted a sentence from a thoughtful speech on life as a Latina and judge. "I would hope," she said, "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."

"Reverse discrimination!" cried Rush Limbaugh. "Identity politics!" huffed opponents waving this evidence that her background was her bias, against of course, white men. They would have been better off reading her entire meditation on what life experience brings to the bench. But that doesn't happen in a politics of sound bites.

Indeed, Sotomayor was considering a phrase that Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have both repeated: "At the end of the day, a wise old man and a wise old woman reach the same judgment."

Neither justice was denying the importance of more women on the court. O'Connor, after all, praised her successor, John Roberts, saying, "He's good in every way, except he's not a woman." Ginsburg has made no secret of the loneliness of the lone woman. They merely raised the possibility that wisdom is — or can be — an equal opportunity gift. A wise person.

Nevertheless, this swirling controversy around the third woman and first Latina on the court raises an old question about how much difference diversity makes. Or should make.

Justice Antonin Scalia, for example, has insisted that his religious background has nothing to do with his legal opinions: "Just as there is no 'Catholic' way to cook a hamburger," he said there is no legal decision spiced by his upbringing. True or self-deceptive? Roberts, described as a "relentless champion of the overdog," may see himself as the paragon of impartiality. It is only newcomers who are challenged as change agents.

We know that there is no single "woman's point of view." O'Connor and Ginsburg were not ideological twins. Yet, I remember the school sexual harassment case when O'Connor spoke for Little Jane while her peer and classmate Anthony Justice Kennedy spoke for Little Johnny. More recently, there was the case of a 13-year-old schoolgirl strip-searched to (only) Ginsburg's dismay. And when Lilly Ledbetter came to court, there was a shortage of wise men.