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   From: harleyh@outlook.com   
      
   Justice Sonia Sotomayor says the Supreme Court needs more   
   diversity, amid the politically charged debate about filling a   
   vacancy on the high court.   
      
   "I … think there is a disadvantage from having (five) Catholics,   
   three Jews, everyone from an Ivy League school," Sotomayor, the   
   court's first Latina justice, said Friday at Brooklyn Law School.   
      
   However, she did not mention by name Judge Merrick Garland, a   
   white male with a Harvard Law School degree whom President Obama   
   recently nominated to fill the vacancy of Justice Antonin   
   Scalia, a conservative voice on the court. Scalia died   
   unexpectedly in January.   
      
   She also told the audience that several of the eight justices   
   are, like her, from New York City and that none has practiced   
   criminal defense law outside white-collar settings. Sotomayor   
   graduated from Yale Law School.   
      
   The Garland nomination has spark a sharp debate in Washington   
   and across the county about whether Obama should fill the   
   vacancy in his final months in office or the next president who   
   takes office in January.   
      
   Obama has essentially argued he has a constitutional obligation   
   to submit a nominee to Congress and that Garland would be a   
   moderate in a court now split 4-4 among liberals and   
   conservatives.   
      
   However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said   
   he will not hold nomination hearings while Obama is in the White   
   House, saying Americans should be part of the decision by   
   electing the next president.   
      
   Some liberal groups hoped Obama, who had previously tapped   
   Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan, would nominate another woman   
      
   The 63-year-old Garland is Jewish and the chief judge of the   
   U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.   
      
   Sotomayor didn't mention Garland or touch on the nomination. But   
   in answer to diversity-related questions submitted by Brooklyn   
   Law students, she said she felt that varied backgrounds help   
   justices "educate each other to be better listeners and better   
   thinkers because we understand things from experience."   
      
   She recounted a 2009 oral argument in which Justice Ruth Bader   
   Ginsburg suggested that her then all-male colleagues had wrongly   
   equated a strip-search of a middle-school girl to changing for   
   gym class in a locker room because they had "never been a 13-   
   year-old girl." The court ultimately ruled, 8-1, that the search   
   was unconstitutional.   
      
   Sotomayor stressed that decisions depend on the law, not   
   personal viewpoints or experiences.   
      
   "But a different perspective can permit you to more fully   
   understand the arguments that are before you and help you   
   articulate your position in a way that everyone will   
   understand," she said.   
      
   http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/04/09/sotomayor-wants-more-   
   diversity-on-court-after-obama-picks-garland-white-ivy-male.html   
       
      
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