Vol. 73/No. 32      August 24, 2009

In the last decade the U.S. rulers have substantially increased the numbers of Blacks, Latinos, and women in the government, its legal system, the officer caste of the armed forces, and the police, with the aim making those bodies more effective tools in preparation to face growing resistance by working people to the effects of economic and social crisis.

In the final Senate debate on her nomination, every Democrat voted in favor of confirming her, as did nearly a quarter of Republicans, including such prominent Republican senators as Mel Martinez, Lindsay Graham, and Lamar Alexander.

Rightist forces who sought to prevent her confirmation, focusing on comments or rulings she had made in the past on affirmative action, remained isolated.

“There is no reason for the business community to be concerned” about Sotomayor, Lauren Goldman, of the law firm Mayer Brown, which has represented big-business interests from Wachovia to Dow Chemical, told the Wall Street Journal. The Journal noted approvingly Sotomayor’s “occasional siding with corporate defendants.” It gave as an example her rejection of some class-action lawsuits, often resorted to by workers trying to collectively wring some justice out of the capitalist legal system.

Sotomayor ruled against the Center for Reproductive Rights, which had challenged the Bush administration’s “Global Gag Rule” that prohibited overseas organizations from receiving U.S. government funds if they provided abortion services or openly supported abortion rights. In another case she refused to suppress crack cocaine seized as “evidence” during a police raid that used a warrant which had expired more than a year earlier.

At her confirmation hearings, Sotomayor downplayed comments she once made that she was “an affirmative action baby” who only got into Princeton University and Yale Law School through affirmative action programs. She said she now regrets that she may have offended some people with a comment made in 2001, frequently cited by rightists, that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

Liberal Democrats at the hearings emphasized Sotomayor’s “mainstream” record as a judge. Sen. Charles Schumer went so far as to tell Republican senators: “She has agreed with your Republican colleagues 95 percent of the time; she has ruled for the government in 83 percent of immigration cases [and] 92 percent of criminal cases; she has denied race claims in 83 percent of all cases; she has split evenly in a variety of employment cases.”

A look at the record of the Supreme Court shows that its racial and gender makeup has had no effect on how that body rules on issues of race or class justice, any more than has the ratio of “conservative” judges to “liberal” judges. That body’s decisions are made strictly on what it perceives is in the interests of the billionaire families it serves at any given time.

It was in 1973, under the administration of Richard Nixon, that the Supreme Court overturned laws outlawing abortion. This followed the civil rights battles by Blacks in the 1950s and early 1960s that had a profound impact on other oppressed layers of the population, from Puerto Ricans and Chicanos to women.

As more women entered the work force and achieved a measure of economic independence, their self-confidence grew and barriers to their full emancipation—such as laws criminalizing abortion—became increasingly intolerable. The needs of the expanding capitalist system for more workers also required that women have more flexibility to decide when, or if, to have children. Although the high court has since taken steps to restrict abortion rights, the relationship of class forces is what holds it back from overturning its 1973 decision today.  
 
 
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