Racism and Judicial Activism
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to become a Justice on the United States Supreme Court has drawn attention to a controversial appellate court ruling of hers in Ricci v DeStefano. In that case, the inherently unjust (self-contradictory) nature of Title VII applications is obvious. Essentially, a racially neutral exam was nullified by the fact that a white majority happened to perform better on it than their minority counterparts. Such coincidences occur naturally over any significant statistical sample. In some cases minorities would happen to perform better—not because of their minority status, but because of the relevant skills they would bring to the exam. In other cases, like (more…)
