From the mouth of a Supreme Court Justice:

 

 

In 2001, <a class="" href='http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/sonia_sotomayor/index.html?inline=nyt-per&version=meter+at+4&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-click' title="More articles about Sonia Sotomayor.">Sonia Sotomayor</a>, an appeals court judge, gave a speech declaring that the ethnicity and sex of a judge “may and will make a difference in our judging.”

 

<p class="">Judge Sotomayor has given several speeches about the importance of diversity. But her 2001 remarks at Berkeley, which were published by the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, went further, asserting that judges’ identities will affect legal outcomes.

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<p class="">“Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences,” she said, for jurists who are women and nonwhite, “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/15j...2&referer=

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