Sotomayor: US High Court Needs More Diversity, in Many Ways

*Check it out. President Obama makes a political chess move, nominates Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, then Justice Sonia Sotomayor goes to the Brooklyn Law School to talk about the need for diversity on the court. Gotta love it! VL

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By Jennifer Peltz, Associated Press

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the nation’s highest court needs more diversity of personal backgrounds and professional experience, speaking as a vacancy has refocused attention on the court’s makeup.

During a talk Friday at Brooklyn Law School, Sotomayor didn’t mention the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland, who is highly respected but wouldn’t add racial, religious, or educational diversity to the high court. But Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina justice, said “it is important that we have greater diversity on the Supreme Court” and in the legal profession.

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“I, for one, do think there is a disadvantage from having (five) Catholics, three Jews, everyone from an Ivy League school,” several justices from New York City and no one who practiced criminal defense law outside white-collar settings . . . READ MORE

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[Photo by Commonwealth Club/Flickr]

Suggested reading

Feminism, Nation and Myth explores the scholarship of La Malinche, the indigenous woman who is said to have led Cortés and his troops to the Aztec city of Tenochtitlán. The figure of La Malinche has generated intense debate among literature and cultural studies scholars. Drawing from the humanities and the social sciences, feminist studies, queer studies, Chicana/o studies, and Latina/o studies, critics and theorists in this volume analyze the interaction and interdependence of race, class, and gender. Studies of La Malinche demand that scholars disassemble and reconstruct concepts of nation, community, agency, subjectivity, and social activism.

Contributors include Alfred Arteaga, Antonia Castañeda, Debra Castillo, Alicia Gaspar de Alba, Deena González, María Herrera Sobek, Guisela Latorre, Luis Leal, Sandra Messinger Cypess, Franco Mondini-Ruiz, Amanda Nolacea Harris, Rolando J. Romero, and Tere Romo.  These academic essays are complemented by the creative work of Alicia Gaspar de Alba and José Emilio Pacheco, both of whom evoke the figure of La Malinche in their work.

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