news-record.com

Kathleen Parker in today's News & Record on Sotomayor:

"... When Sotomayor and I were girls, there were few girl-oriented books and fewer female professional role models. On my weekly visit to the public library, I checked out as many women's biographies as I could find, searching for someone with whom I could identify.

"These recollections are recounted for the single purpose of illustrating that we are all products of our life experiences. The empathy I feel for motherless children is boundless. My understanding of the world having grown up a minority in an all-male household is different than those who had both a mother and a father.

"And though I never requested nor wanted special consideration, my sense of the world as I navigated the testosterone-rich environment of America's old newsrooms as one of relatively few women is not the same as that of my male counterparts.

"If I were a judge, I would bring to the bench all those experiences and the accumulated wisdom derived from them. I do not think that would make me a less-fair or less-objective jurist than the men on either side of me. I am certain, however, that my intellectual makeup does not exist independently of the emotions that helped form me.

"As a Latina from a Bronx housing project reared by a single mother, Sotomayor knows things the other justices on the Supreme Court can't possibly know. She may be the wrong choice for other reasons, but not because she recognizes that the law, properly applied, requires both brains and heart.

"If it were otherwise, a robot would do."