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Originally Posted by UGAalum94
Most generously, maybe, but she didn't say that a wise Latina was equally as likely to reach a good conclusion as a white guy; she asserted that the wise Latina was more likely to, and that's why, even in context, I still find it problematic.
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I'm not saying it's not problematic -- I said above I think it was a poor choice of words. I'm just saying why I don't think, read in context, she was saying that Latinas are more "fit" for the bench than white males. (And again, she did not say that the wise Latina "would" make a better decision; she said that she "would
hope" that the wise Latina would make a better decision.)
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It also doesn't make a lot of sense to me to compare historic legal decisions that we generally regard as wrong today with the likely behavior of anyone in the present.
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I think it does make sense when the judges in question (Holmes, Cardozo) are still held up as among the best we've ever had. (When I was in law school, Cardozo was always mentioned with something approaching a degree of reverence.) Plus, her point was that had an African-American, a woman or a Latino been on the bench
at the time, a different perspective would likely have been present in the decision-making, so that what we now regard as a wrong decision might not have been made to begin with.