Experience does matter

The idea that Sonia Sotomayor's experiences should not have an influence on her decision making is simply bone headed. Note, George Will still hasn't gotten over Robert "Slouching towards Gemorrah" Bork.

Conversely, the notion that she will not materially change the make-up of the court, replacing one mildly liberal traditional northeast conservative with a slightly more liberal, is also wrong, according to Linda Greenhouse.

After Justice Thurgood Marshall retired in 1991, Justice O’Connor published a tribute describing him as the embodiment of “moral truth” and recounting the experience of listening to his stories during the decade that they served together, stories that “would, by and by, perhaps change the way I see the world.”

That was a striking statement from a justice who was on the opposite side from Thurgood Marshall in nearly every civil rights case and whose jurisprudence appeared unmarked by his influence. But it turned out to be Justice O’Connor who wrote the majority opinion in 2003 that upheld affirmative action in admission to the University of Michigan Law School. The way she saw the world in the interval had clearly changed, whatever the cause.