Don't Male Judges Have 'Feelings'?

Will her "feelings" affect Sonia Sotomayor's judicial rulings?

A Supreme Court nomination should not be a coronation. Examine her written opinions. Discover how many times her rulings have been reversed. Ask tough questions.

We're not talking so much about that.

Early criticism of President Obama's choice of Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court has focused on his desired quality of "empathy" and her imagined embodiment of it.

I guess men don't have feelings.

So much judgment reverts to familiar gender and racial stereotypes of sober, stoic, white guys, the very picture of neutral, judicious behavior versus a woman -- an Hispanic woman, for goodness' sake. I don't believe she won honors at Princeton and Yale Law on emotion.

Her back story (born and raised in the Bronx by her hard-working mother after her father died) is a part of her. But it's not as though white males come to the court as a blank slate or that a background of privilege doesn't resonate in its own way.

And it doesn't mean that "empathy" will trump the rule of law.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg – appointed to the Supreme Court by a Democrat – said she felt "lonely" when Reagan appointee Sandra Day O'Connor left the court. I don't think she missed the girl talk. She told USA Today in 2007 that when O'Connor was her colleague, the message was: "Here are two women. They don't look alike. They don't always vote alike. But here are two women."

And all those guys, still.