By: Daniel Buckley
For: Law and Literarature
I recently read an article in the New Yorker by Lauren Collins
entitled “Number Nine – Sonia Sotomayor’s high-profile debut.” The
article gives you pretty much all that you would expect from it – a
comprehensive rundown of her personal history with a focus on her
appointment and the “controversies” surrounding it. What I feel the
article was attempting to get at, as is suggested by the title and the
conclusion, is that Sotomayor is the first Supreme Court Justice to
reach a level of celebrity in her appointment to the Supreme Court.
I also saw an interview with Sotomayor on C-SPAN about a week ago in
which she talked about celebrity and accessibility and how they relate
to educating the public about the inner workings of the Supreme Court
and the civil and criminal systems in place in the United States as a
whole. Sotomayor seemed to be saying that she embraced the
opportunity to convey such information to the public and, the reporter
added, that her minority-representation status would further this
ability.
Of course, if there were a judge capable of doing these things, it
would be a Supreme Court Justice. Particularly one with media
following. And I, for one, would really like to get behind the idea
of the general public caring about Supreme Court Justices and the way
that they judge. Or about the criminal justice system. Or about
anything that I’ve studied in law school for the past two and a half
years. But at the end of the day, the general public just doesn’t
care. That’s why the only thing that people really know about
Sotomayor’s career, even though she was just appointed, is the “wise
Latina” comment. Most people outside of the legal or political world,
when told that I want to be a public defender, think that I want to
work for the DA’s office – I guess they think I mean I want to “defend
the public.” (Not that they say “DA’s office,” they just talk about
Law & Order.) God forbid I try to explain right to counsel.
But just because I think that the public doesn’t actually care about
Sotomayor as a judge doesn’t mean that I think it doesn’t care about
the law or judges at all. On December 5th, I had my Trial Advocacy
Final, which was a mock civil trial. We had judges (trial attorneys),
we had jurors (paid random people), and we had witnesses (paid
actors). We had openings, directs, crosses, closings, and exhibits
throughout. I, for one, had done quite a bit of work. And as my
partner and I wrapped up, I felt confident that we had won our case.
We won, all right, but it had little to do with me.
This was a class that relied on feedback, so we were allowed to stay
in the room as the fake jury deliberated. They didn’t talk about
their favorite Supreme Court Justice. They didn’t talk about our
arguments. They didn’t even talk about the law. They talked about
Judge Judy and what she would think was fair.
So, Lauren Collins, call Sotomayor a celebrity Justice all you want.
But until she’s a bitter, old hag screaming at people in a fake
courtroom on network television, I doubt most Americans will have any
idea of who she is as a judge, and much less of what impact it has on
them.
