Yeah though I walk through the valley of death, I shall have no fear -- for I have finally acheived my Godship.

...There are adjectives in Spanish, aren't there?

  Sonia Sotomayor is obviously very gifted and able; however, she clouds issues with constant references to her own personal experiences.

This diminishes her work and firmly places her inside the destructive realm of race/class/gender identity politics.

There can be no objectivity and fairness when this mindset is given free rein.

Will the Supreme Court eventually become a place for subjective mini-testimonials before every decision effecting the lives of all Americans?

Taylor's use of a critique by Professor Johnson provides great clarity for readers not inside the academy.

Provocative.

Not an important point, but isn't it a little ridiculous for Sotomayor to talk about her struggles with English like she's some kind of non-native speaker?  I seem to recall, in the La Raza speech, her indicating that fluency in Spanish was something she had to work at.  I also remember her saying that her brother (?) could barely speak Spanish. 

SJ, yes, there are adjectives in Spanish.  The major difference between them and English adjectives is that they generally follow the noun in Spanish, while English adjectives precede the noun (with one exception--"galore").  I suspect that she was just confused on the grammatical terms, but that is an odd statement.

I think that tic in her use of [sic] shows a strong political bent and an unwillingness to concede someone else's phrasing, although it doesn't mean she still does that.

I would be curious to find out if she's still for independence, but I don't think that should be disqualifying.  It's a legitimate side to take, even if it is fringe.

 Thank god I am not judged based on what I thought when I was 22.  But, the adjective thing - what about Rico, as in Puerto Rico?  That's a preposition?

SJ, my wife (who has a DML in French and Spanish), would tend to agree with you.

Sonia is not Puerto Rican. She's a "newyorkrican." I've been married into a true (live on the island) Puerto Rican family for over 20 years. My experience has been that the "true" PR's have nothing but disdain for their mainland cousins. Puerto Ricans see themselves as both Americans and Puerto Ricans (again, my experience).  It's sort of like Texans, but more pronounced. They are proud to  be citizens by birth (something they enjoy rubbing into the faces of other hispanic immigrants) but are equally proud of their language, culture, baseball, olympic teams, and beauty queens. The "independistas" have had great difficulty in trying to convince their fellow countrymen to break off from the US. In countless referendums, they have never been able to get more than 5%. The remainder goes almost equally for statehood and commonwealth, the latter barely winning out.

America really isn't a Republic as long as we have populated areas with no legal power, ergo, her view is consistent with the American Revolutionaries' view of Republics.

The U.S. Constitution, which was written by veteran politicians and soldiers of the Revolution, specifically provides that the U.S. Congress shall have power over territories of the United States (and the special district for the nation's capital).  This power has been exercised over Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Philippines as well as the old Confederate states during Reconstruction.  I do not know of a republic (or democracy) in history that didn't jealously guard its sovereignty and its military prerogatives, sometimes even at the expense of people in its territory who lack the voting franchise.  The USA is a republic even if it cannot be and will not be as democratic as some would like.

Oddly enough, the U.S. courts are our most undemocratic institutions, but those who criticize our Constitution for its undemocratic practices often defend the federal jurisdiction of the courts most zealously.  Few people say it, but the U.S. courts are our adaptation of an aristocracy.  It's not hereditary, but the U.S. court judges are a relatively closed club, appointed for life, isolated, and stable, yet are largely still a meritocracy.  You will find few groups of Americans more patriotic, more committed to the Constitution, or more stubborn and unmovable.  Andrew Jackson spins in his grave, and John Marshall chuckles from his.

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I think the word TRENDY is the best description I've seen so far.

Let's hope the nation is trending the right way, then she might turn out to be a decent judge, even if by accident.

"inserting [sic] into quotes not to identify an error but because she disagreed "

This gets summa cum laude at Princeton?  She's going to the SCOTUS?

Are the Dems doing this only because they can?

Good God - we need a much bigger boat.

  I'm from Puerto Rican, born and raised in Puerto Rico. While at college I met many "neoricans", i.e. people born and raised in the U.S. of Puerto Rican parents. Ms. Sotomayor's is a self described "neorican".

Neither fish nor fowl, overcompensating for the ambiguity of their cultural heritage defines their behavior.  Born and raised in the US, english being their primary language, they spoke spanish with a curious mix of an american accent and an exaggerated slang spanish, I guess to emphasize their "authenticity". The effect totally undermined the intent, as the english accent made it clear they were not native speakers, and the exaggerated slang sounded parodic rather than authentic. Think trying to sound like Eminem but coming off as Vanilla Ice.

Having not lived in Puerto Rico or being familiar with the intricacies of island politics, on campus "neoricans" nevertheless assumed the self righteous mantle of authority figures on all discussions pertaining to colonialism, nationalism, or what it meant to be puertorican. No wonder Ms. Sotomayor felt she, a neorican Princeton student, was a better poised judge the issue of puertorican indepedence than the 96% of puertoricans living in Puerto Rico who thought and voted otherwise.

I found this attitude to be somewhat pedantic and humorous outside of the classroom. It was somewhat disappointing when professors took them at their word. I attributed their gullible inability to discern genuine puertorican concerns from the posturings of neoricans who had not lived on the island as the provincial myopia of those living in Ivory Towers. Surely only on campus can such posturing neorican pedants be the toast of the town.

I find it deliciously ironic that Ms. Sotomayor has made peddling her "Latina identity" as the lynchpin of her careerist success. Had she felt as strongly about her cultural identity as she proclaims, she could have moved to Puerto Rico and advanced her career there. Her academic credentials would have opened doors, but not being able to peddle her heritage as a special token, she would have had to rely on her talents for advancement. As we see, she has instead banked on the special luster of her "Latina identiy" to advance her in the world where neorican posturing is warmly received as a source of exotic wisdom. 

What surprises me is that today not only academics, but the legal profession and a large swathe of voters are so thralled by the pedantic posturings ("as a latina better suited than a white male") of a neorican that they are letting her graduate from thinking she is a better judge of Puerto Rican political status than Puerto Ricans to confirming her belief she is better suited to set the law of the land than white North Americans. She is as confused her identity as she is about the role of a judge.

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 Gee - I thought she was an American and educated in US schools.  Is she saying that New York schools teach the Spanish way of writing.

Signed, John Hanson - Swedish American

Thesis (no pun intended): She's a Latina Leftist, ala Chavez, Ortega, Castro (i.e. colonialism, North American Congress (Mocking imperialism), etc).

Not a big surprise given Obama is a marxist.

No adjectives in Spanish? That's news to Spanish speakers.

What part of Rio Grande does she not understand?

Tim H: Not to pick nits but galore is an adverb and owes its syntactical position to its borrowing from Scots Gaelic and Irish.  Adjectives sometimes appear behind the nouns they modify in English but I can't think of any examples right now, outside of poetry:

"When I was a maiden young and fair
On the pleasant banks of Lee
No bird that in the green wood sang
Was half so blithe and free.
My heart near beat with flying feet
The lark sang me his queen
When down through the glen rode Sarsfield's men
And they wore their jackets green.

 

I wrote a senior thesis at Harvard a year before KC Johnson did. I would hate to be judged by it now, more than 20 years later, either for its ideological biases or quality of reasoning.  Sotomayor wrote these words A LONG TIME AGO, when she was hardly more than an adolescent.  I'm glad to hear that the work was good. I also wouldn't fault her on any of its peculiarities (e.g., referring to the North American Congress), as it's effectively impossible to determine which reflected her heart-felt sentiment at the time and which reflected the peculiarities that her thesis advisor foisted on her.

I think her legal opinions as a judge, as well as her speeches, are totally fair game for analyis as to how she thinks. Her senior thesis from 35 years ago is just too much of a stretch, in my opinion.

   I can understand her difficulties with  Spanish.  I took several years of Spanish and thought myself fairly fluent until I was stationed in Spain. It was only then that I discovered I had been learning Mexican.

     Respects,

I would be curious to find out if she's still for independence, but I don't think that should be disqualifying.  It's a legitimate side to take, even if it is fringe.

Tim H.

I recall the faux-outrage, whining and carrying on over the rumor that Sarah Palin's hubby had at one time joined the Independance party in Alaska.  I wonder how such a revelation, if correct, about SS's involvement in a PR independance movement will be spun.

Michale A,

Adjectives sometimes appear behind the nouns they modify in English but I can't think of any examples right now,

While used as a proper noun in the movie, one could cite the Bond villain "Pussy Galore" as just such an example :-)

I just want to comment regarding the "North American" Congress thing. It might make a difference whether the thesis was in English or Spanish. If it was in Spanish, then there may be an innocent explanation.

It happens that I am a Canadian working in Colombia. One of the things that dives me crazy is that, in Spanish, people from the US are referred to as "norteamericanos" (i.e. North Americans). Other nationalities have their own terms...Canadians are "candienses", French are "franceses", Aussies are called "australianos" etc etc. There is a perfectly good term for those of you from the US as well..."estadounidenses", which appears from time to time in newspapers. Generally, however, you get this term "norteamericano"...as in Pres. Obama being the "norteamericano" President...which he isn't. (check with Pres. calderon and Prime Minister Harper if you need confirmation).

So, my irritation aside, I think it's possible that the phrase "North American Congress" may simply be a careless transposition or translation.

I'm obviously not saying this for sure, but considering a possibility.

Cheers

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It's not only plain wrong but utterly absurd and mystifying to say "in Spanish we do not have adjectives."

Does she know what an adjective is? In the term "el Corte Supremo," what is the word "supremo? A preoposition?

The Spanish word for adjective is 'adjectivo'.  Obviously the language has adjectives.

South Americans often refer to citizens of the US as North Americans, and the United States of America as the United States of North America.

Our first proposed treaty with Paraguay in the 1800s was rejected for that reason - it had our official name wrong (see Washburn's History of Paraguay).

“Fourth, she asserted that Muñoz Marín’s economic program, called Operation Bootstrap, failed primarily because Puerto Ricans continued to think of themselves as colonials.”

Why does this remind me of the black liberation theology?

According to Wikipedia

"For grammar school, Sotomayor attended the parochial Blessed Sacrament School in Soundview, where she was valedectorian and had a near-perfect attendance record"

Must have been tough.  Everybody knows how bad those private school educations are.

The problem with both Judge Sotomayor and President Obama is a deep abiding immaturity. Everything is about them in their world view. President Obama’s affinity to identity politics trumps all issues including qualities he requires in a Supreme Court Justice. His beliefs in this regard are not a surprise.  He expressed them in his comments on why he voted against Chief Justice Roberts and were posted on his Senate web site. The empathy thing was mentioned of course along with an astounding and extraconstitutional statement that weakness in defendants and plaintiffs should be the determiner when deciding cases. This weakness is based on race, wealth and gender. It is no wonder Judge Sotomayor believes her wisdom to be superior to the wisdom of white males. The irony that two legal scholars as gifted as Stuart Taylor and K.C. Johnson who fought so valiantly defending the Duke University lacrosse players wrongly accused by a “weak minority female” and their subsequent support for Barack Obama is not reconcilable. They should have known by his remarks prior to his run for president that his Supreme Court nominations would mirror his silly and unlawful concepts. As one who has followed and respected Mr. Taylor’s expertise in judicial matters this is a profound disappointment. Professor Johnson, too is a disappointment. Their book on the Duke lacrosse hoax was masterful and exhibited what I thought was a deep regard for Constitutional principles. But when it came to President Obama they were willing to scatter those principles to the wind.

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Spanish definitely has "adjetivos," so she seems to suggest that at some point she didn't have a good command of either English or Spanish. When she talks about prepositions, she is apparently referring to the fact that Spanish also uses "de + noun" to describe another noun, but that's only used in some cases. So for example you can say "este carro de basura (garbage)" to say you have a really crummy car.

However, most college students (even at elite institutions) need to improve their writing, so I would expect that she has taken care of that problem. I also wouldn't be too concerned about someone's politics at a young age, especially if we recall François Guizot's nineteenth-century observation that,  "Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head."

Her reference to the North American Congress is rather silly, but it does reflect a Spanish use of the word "norteamericano" to refer to what the beauty contestant called U.S. Americans. Nevertheless, if you are going to write an honors thesis at Princeton, then you should write U.S. Congress rather than use a Spanglish expression.

As far as English adjectives following the noun, I can think of two examples  which I believe have this structure because they are taken directly from French: attorney general and court martial (the plurar forms are attorneys general and courts martial).

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 Many "neorriqueños" or Nuyoricans developed their own cultural identities in the 60s and 70s partly as a rejection of the misplaced superiority complex of island Puerto Ricans, who claim innate authenticity because of their birthplace, even though many of the most vocal proponents of Nuyorican identity were born on the island but then had the good fortune and sense to move to the mainland U.S.  Remember that island politics were and continue to be a pale imitation of the U.S. system, but the corruption and cronyism is far more acute and endemic.  That's why in all the plebiscites in which islanders have voted to determine their political status, neither statehood nor independence ever gets the majority vote, because despite their local pride, most Puerto Rican islanders grudgingly recognize the impossibility for true self-government as long as they maintain their schizophrenic disdain for those Puerto Ricans who claim U.S. identity, while they consider themselves second-class citizens of the U.S.  Perhaps that's what Sotomayor was getting at in her thesis.

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