Conservatives' fears of Sotomayor's "empathy" lies in their love of the rule of law. To a conservative, it is more important that everyone understand and abide by the same unchanging rules than that the rules themselves be the best possible rules.. Most reasonable people, including conservatives, will admit that Sotomayor will probably make plenty of good rulings. Their fear is that her "empathy" will cause her to interpret the same law in different ways for different people - which is inherently unfair.

This is an argument about the Rule of Law against the Rule of Man (or latinas, or whatever). Conservatives see liberals' attempts to make each application of the law work out to the best for all parties involved, but even if they believe that people like Sotomayor truly have everyone's best interest at heart - let us assume for the moment that she is not a racist, sexist, or any other label the conservative idealogues are trying to give her - that liberals are human, and therefore fallible.

Strict, unchanging interpretation of law allows for fair play. Some people get the worst of it, but they had the same chance as everyone else. "Empathic" interpretation and application of the law is like introducing house rules halfway through a poker game. "Oh, Rosarita only has a low pair this game. Let's make deuces wild this hand; maybe that will make this game more fun." It is arbitrary, no matter how well-intentioned, and conservatives see it as the foundation of tyranny.

As happens a lot lately, the descent into partisan rhetoric prevents what could otherwise be a useful discussion.

Empathy: "understanding or entering into another's feelings". To be an effective therapist, you must be able to collect key information about a patient, so as identify productive course of therapy. The ability to understand a patient's feelings is obviously essential to treating them.

But the "more is better" concept doesn't always work. "Understanding" a patient's feelings is helpful as a data-gathering tool. But empathy can go beyond that point. It can be entering into those feelings yourself- relating to them- reacting on some deeper level yourself that might color your approach in ways you don't fully realize- that may go against the strategy formulated in your frontal lobe.

If that is given too much license, then might you:

1) Misread a relationship problem because one person evokes great empathy and the other doesn't at all. What if the latter person is actually being abused by the first- would you be a tad late in getting to that information, because of your empathy?

2) Would you give more robust treatment to a patient that evoked great empathy versus one who evoked none- because on a deeper level one energizes you more?

3) Does empathy, at some point, risk compromising useful objectivity- e.g., when tough measures or harsh truth might actually be the right calls.

The discussion here should be about when empathy ceases to be an excellent information tool and when it becomes disruptive to progress. When we figure that out, we might then try to see if it helps us understand the same issues for a Supreme Court justice.

Wayne

Justice Sotomayor's evolved sense of empathy cannot be seperated from her work. Anything short of this amounts to a reduction to a human biological imperative. Some might choose to live in denial but the fact remains that our values to an extent form the basis in shaping our our perception of social reality but the mathematics of jurisprudence appeals to our good commonsense while it summons us to derive judgements on a subjective and objective level.