Reply to Judge Sotomayor is right: Ethnic heritage can affect judgement

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our life experiences, the experiences of those close to us, no matter what race, have an effect on our points of view.  This is no different for a judge, congressman, president or mom down the street, we are all human.  The assumption is that people like judges can put their perceptions aside, but it gets blurry when those life experiences are part of the reason they are in their seat of power.  I don't have the answer.  I don't think DT is completely wrong in his opinion but I don't think he's completely right.  [/quote]

Right. Trump was merely reacting to unfair rulings by this particular judge. It's reasonable to question this judge's background could produce bias against him.[/quote]

Not really.

First of all, I didn't particularly like Sotamayor's comment. I get what she meant by it, but thought it was poorly expressed at best. But in any case, her point was that a wide variety of perspective and life preexistence could improve the functioning of the federal judiciary. In that sense, having ethnically diverse judges decreases "bias" in the statistical sense. Trump was saying that [b]anyone who has a particular background that he has arguably insulted is inherently "biased," as in "prejudiced" against him.[/b] That's a dumb and racist thing to say.

You're now making a slightly softer criticism than Trump, which is that it is [i]possible[/i] someone's background could cause them to be biased. And yes, that's true. But that doesn't suddenly make it reasonable to accuse a particular person of ethnic or nationalistic bias based solely on the fact that they disagreed with you on a pretrial motion. And let's be clear that [b]any somewhat informed lawyer[/b] will tell you that the rulings that have gone against Trump have been on routine pre-trial issues. Trump is trying to play up that there's something shocking about the fact that many judges allow you to substitute named plaintiffs in class actions. But there's nothing unusual or notable about that decision even if you think Curiel got it wrong, so to immediately trash him and stock ethnic tensions is exceptionally befitting of someone who wants to be President, as even many people who have endorsed Trump have already said.[/quote]

I don't like Trump's comments either. But I don't think they are racist. He never said all Mexican are biased against him. He said this particular judge hates him and he is proud of his heritage and that's fine. It is entirely possible that this judge's background could cause him to be biased.

Trump said his lawyers and some legal experts he consulted didn't think the rulings have been fair, particularly allowing the chief plaintiff to withdraw but not dismissing the case. Their defense was built on attacking this key witness and the judge granted the withdraw. [/quote]

I would have agreed with you based on only the rant while he was stumping. I think in the Tapper interview he unambiguously states that there is an inherent problem with a Mexican person (or a Muslim person) judging him. And as Paul Ryan and several other prominent republicans have said, that's pretty much the textbook definition of racism.*

* As discussed on a separate thread, its actually the textbook definition of national origin discrimination, but let's set pedantry aside.[/quote]

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