Thursday, October 08, 2009

Christian Science Monitor - As Justice Sotomayor Hits the High Court, A Defense of Empathy

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2009-05-06-Empathy.jpg

Nice article - found it at AlterNet, but it comes from The Christian Science Monitor. Strange that empathy became a dirty word during the confirmation hearings.

As Justice Sotomayor Hits the High Court, A Defense of Empathy

By Rick DeJesús-Rueff, Christian Science Monitor. Posted October 7, 2009.

Weighing and balancing perspectives with empathy is a better recipe for justice than "blindness," which can cause us to miss the glaring injustices of our legal system.

The U.S. Supreme Court returns to work this week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor begins her first term, and the highly charged debate over "empathy" is, for the moment, dormant.

But now -- in this less heated environment -- is a good time to reconsider the value of empathy as one qualification for nominees to the court.

President Obama cited empathy as a quality he sought in nominees, yet empathy suffered criticism and derision from opponents of Justice Sotomayor. Listening to the critics, you might believe empathy renders a person incapable of rational and fair judgment.

"I'm afraid our system will only be further corrupted as a result of President Obama's views that, in tough cases, the critical ingredient for a judge is the 'depth and breadth of one's empathy,' as well as 'their broader vision of what America should be,' " claimed Sen. Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama, a critic of Sotomayor and empathy injustices.

Read the whole article.


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