Sonia Sotomayor is uniquely and exquisitely sensitive to race issues because she is a Latina. Dahlia Lithwick More Quotes by Dahlia Lithwick More Quotes From Dahlia Lithwick On a court full of great writers, I shouldn't say full of - there have been some bad writers on the court over the years. Dahlia Lithwick courtlostyears One of the things that drives me batty is people who think they're court watchers, who say, "Oh, Clarence Thomas. You know, his clerks do all the work for him. You know, he doesn't deserve to be there, and has never done anything." Dahlia Lithwick clerkspeoplethinking Donald Verrilli has argued 37 cases in five years on behalf of the [Barak] Obama administration. Many of them turned out to be truly landmark cases. He is the seventh-longest-serving solicitor general in American history. Dahlia Lithwick american-historyadministrationyears I want to stay on the subject of marriage equality because this is the part of the show that everybody loves but you hate if you're the one who has to hear your own voice. Dahlia Lithwick marriage-equalityvoicehate I think particularly on the left, progressives wanted more bombast and more. Dahlia Lithwick leftwantedthinking I'm hardly the first person to say that you've [Jeffrey Rosen] written a book about a person who has more to say about the current state of being than almost anyone, Louis Brandeis, and yet nobody is talking about Louis Brandeis. Dahlia Lithwick talkingbookfirsts On the one hand we want to preserve the integrity of the judicial branch, and we want to talk about judicial independence, and how damaging and dangerous it is when Donald Trump calls out Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel. And at the same time, at the end of the day, judges work for us and we can recall them and we can impeach them. Dahlia Lithwick judgingintegrityhands Am I right in saying that the locust of this problem is simply that judges in America are half political animals and half oracular demigods? Dahlia Lithwick judginganimalamerica There can be no difference between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples anywhere in the USA. Dahlia Lithwick coupleoppositessex For the most part, much of the legal world's attention has been focused on Donald Trump and his attacks on Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge who is currently presiding over the Trump University fraud cases in California. Trump somehow managed to offend surprising numbers of establishment Republicans. Dahlia Lithwick californiajudgingnumbers What's exquisitely weird about the Donald Trump/Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel formulation is that this isn't even a case about race. Dahlia Lithwick trumpracejudging What's doubly, possibly triply weird about the [Donald] Trump claim is that I said something really hateful and offended an entire class of people, and in a case that actually has nothing to do with race he should still be conflicted out. Dahlia Lithwick raceclasspeople Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel has not said anything, and in fact, cannot say anything. But I would even broaden it out to, you know, judges who are victims of attack ads in say state Supreme Court elections can't talk back. Judges are really barred from commenting on this kind of huge public hue and cry. Dahlia Lithwick huejudgingsay-anything Even Merrick Garland can't get up and give a press conference in which he says, "Give me a damn vote." We just hear silence. Dahlia Lithwick votesilencegiving Aaron Persky who is the judge who really I think it's fair to say there is a mob seeking to recall him because of what's perceived as a too-lenient sentence in a sexual assault case. Dahlia Lithwick lenientjudgingthinking I've been thinking so much about how grateful I am to cover the court because the constraints of calm and civility are really palpable when you look across the street, and that, you know, I feel like the discourse has become so overheated that, you know, we talk about everything in the exact tone that seems to sort of preclude reason and to preclude the possibility of agreement. Dahlia Lithwick gratefulagreementthinking
