Assistant District Attorney Sonia Sotomayor

by Dave Bennion · 2009-06-08 08:00:00 UTC
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No, I’m not happy with Sonia Sotomayor’s five-year stint as a district attorney.

Yes, I’m glad she helped stop the Tarzan Murderer from killing more New Yorkers.  Yes, I’m happy she had a hand in bringing a modicum of order to the city so that I could live in Bed-Stuy 25 years later.

No, I can’t complain too loudly about her choice after my own internship at the U.S. attorney’s office (SDNY).  Yes, criticism like this will only help her chances of being confirmed.

At the end of the day, I would rather see a diverse DA’s office than one staffed exclusively by white men.  But still, I find myself wondering with her Yale classmates why she decided to take that job.  Her contemporaneous comments are instructive:

“It pains me,” she said in [a 1983 newspaper] article, “when I meet particularly bright defendants — and I’ve met quite a few of them — people who, if they had had the right guidance, the right education, the right breaks, could have been contributing members of our society. When they get convicted, there’s a satisfaction, because they’re doing things that are dangerous. But there are also nights when I sit back and say, ‘My God, what a waste!’ ”

And

“The one thing I have found,” she said, “is that if you come into the criminal justice system on a prosecutorial or defense level thinking that you can change the ills of society, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. This is not where those kinds of changes have to be made.”

I suspect that there will be vigorous discussion at the confirmation hearings about these comments.  And while I agree with Charles Kuck on the vital importance of Litigation, I also agree with the young Sotomayor that societal ills won’t be remedied through skillful lawyering alone.

Update: And this is why I have concerns.  And why there are limits to justice in flawed systems like our criminal justice and immigration systems.

Dave Bennion
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