Barack Obama has nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice Souter on the High Court. As expected, she is a deeply flawed candidate who has made outrageous comments concerning race and judicial activism. The mainstream media has either not reported or downplayed her controversial statements, which are the most relevant points about her to be scrutinized. Instead, the media is focusing on the most trivial and irrelevant topics of ‘her compelling life story’.

Sotomayor has revealed on more than one occasion that she is a judicial activist and is therefore wholly inadequate to sit on any court, yet alone the highest court in the land. The New York Times reported that in 2001, at the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture, Sotomayor made the following comment: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Aside from her statement being tinged with racism, what difference should it make whether you are a white male or a Latina female if your job is to impartially apply the law?

Sotomayor later said: “Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.” Sotomayor readily admits that she, as a judge, is influenced by “gender and national origins.” That fact alone should disqualify her from the bench. Additionally, a very high rate of her decisions are overturned, giving further evidence that she is a liberal activist.

She manifestly has no respect for the proper role of a judge or Supreme Court justice. It cannot be made more clear than to think of a judge as a referee who applies the rules of the game (law). It should not make a scintilla of difference what her sex or race is as a referee. But radicals like Sotomayor do not think of themselves as referees who apply the rules evenly. She believes a judge should be changing and/or making the rules of the game.

There is a video of her admitting this, saying that the “court of appeals is where policy is made.” In a moment of truth she let it slip and added: “And I know - I know this is on tape, and I should never say that because we don’t make law. I know. O.K. I know. I’m not promoting it. I’m not advocating it …” But the problem is she just did, and she did so in a contemptuous way. In backpedaling and trying to retract her own words, you can hear people in the room laughing, as though the corruption of the judicial branch should not be taken seriously.

Sotomayor, like other activist judges, appears to have more of a social philosophy than a judicial one. Historical context or original intent is done away with in favor of personal preferences and social engineering.

With a judge like Sotomayor, the Constitution is an amorphous ‘living’ document. If it is constantly ‘evolving’ with the times, then by definition it cannot be the same thing it was before. Where it once had authority and meaning, it will no longer. Thomas Jefferson called the judiciary “the despotic branch”, and warned that the Constitution would become “a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”

This is precisely what is wrong with make-it-up-as-you-go-along liberal judges. A non-living Constitution is the only sensible one to have, because it binds people to a set of rules with a fixed meaning. As Jonah Goldberg writes, this is important because it “ensures that future generations will be protected from judges or politicians who’d like to rule arbitrarily…We all like to believe that we have some say about what this country will be like for our children and grandchildren. A ‘living Constitution’ denies us our voice in this regard because it basically holds that whatever decisions we make…can be thrown out by any five dyspeptic justices on the Supreme Court. In other words, the justices who claim the Constitution is a wild card didn’t take their oath to uphold and defend the Constitution in good faith because they couldn’t know what they were swearing to.”

A Supreme Court justice is supposed to interpret the Constitution in a dispassionate and agenda-free manner. Liberals on the other hand want activist judges, who will ignore or twist the Constitution to produce the outcomes they desire. For the Left, the only job of a judge or Supreme Court justice is to create equality or ’social justice’. They will admit as much, as Democratic Senator Herb Kohl remarked: “The neutral approach, that of the judge just applying the law, is very often inadequate to ensure social progress . . . ” The Left has always been a product of postmodernism and the French Revolution. Therefore, the greatest evil is not injustice or even murder, but inequality.

A country cannot function with a legal system based on feelings or empathy. If a judge can rule in favor or against someone based on what creates ’social justice’, regardless of law, the system crumbles into a third world kangaroo court. America has spent decades trying to get away from the tyrannical notions of other countries, where who you are determines what kind of justice you get. Unfortunately Judge Sonia Sotomayor represents that kind of judicial tyranny, because who you are will influence her decisions. There is a good reason why Lady Justice is depicted wearing a blindfold. But with activist judges like Sotomayor the scales will tip in the direction of her personal preferences, now that the blindfold is removed.