Justice Sotomayor does not attribute Brown v. Board to the court: “the Constitution did it"

[usregimechange]

In her brief, impromptu introductory remarks, she made reference to Brown v. Board of Education, which was decided only a month before she was born. Brown affected the lives of at least 80 percent of those in the room, she suggested, and not just because it began the process of opening doors for minorities and women. The decision in Brown “transformed” American society, she said, but it wasn’t the Court that did it, rather “the Constitution did it.”
http://volokh.com/2010/09/09/justice-sotomayor-at-cwru/

The best decision Obama has made to date.

[MadMaddie]

1. Yes indeed! I think this choice was critical and necessary.

[bettyellen]

2. so proud she's an alumni of my HS as well as my parochial school!

[jgraz]

3. I concur. She's really turning out to be a gem.

Let's hope the same happens with Kagan.

[Fire1]

4. Not if she keeps recusing herself. n/t

[SoxFan]

5. She's bound by the judicial ethics canons

I'm glad that she takes the ethics rules seriously, unlike certain other members of the SCOTUS over the years.

[Fire1]

7. True but she can't keep hiding behind ethics rules and that's

what it will begin to look like.

[blondeatlast]

11. "Hiding"? Few professions take their ethics as seriously as law does, despite

public perception.

[blondeatlast]

8. +1. nt

[w4rma]

6. Sotomayor impresses me. (nt)

[sharesunited]

9. That was a bit disingenuous, I'd say.

Was it "the Constitution" which controlled in Plessy v. Ferguson?

That case institutionalized separate-but-equal for the next sixty years, until it was OVERTURNED by the Warren Court in Brown.

Maybe she just wanted not to offend the folks who decry so-called activist judges.

[usregimechange]

10. Plessy had nothing to do with the Constitution, Brown did, they were right in Brown

[sharesunited]

12. It was an interpretation of the 14th Amendment.

So clearly it had *something* to do with the Constitution!

And the fact that it stood as law-of-the-land for six decades tends to illustrate that it was not an aberration.

I am not too timid to state plainly: SCOTUS is about the justices and the times in which they reign. The Constitution is utterly secondary.