Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Sonia Sotomayor (and Neil Diamond)

Ok, bear with me. It will take a little time to get to the point and bring the title characters together. The Sotomayor hearings got me thinking about originalism which got me thinking about hermeneutics which got me thinking about Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan and Neil Diamond. (It didn't hurt that I bought the Essential Leonard Cohen and 10 New Songs last week.) Leonard Cohen today sounds a lot like Leonard Cohen of 40 years ago. He still has a tight lyrical structure, he still writes about love and sex and loss and his vocal range is still about 3 notes wide. Some might say that if you have heard one Cohen song, you have heard them all.

 But Pico Iyer captured my sense of Cohen (and Dylan) on the liner notes to The Essential Leonard Cohen

"Yet what strikes me most, listening to these songs all at once, is how little in some sense he's changed; the changeless is what he's been about since the beginning. If you think of some of the other great pilgrims of song (Bob Dylan, say, or Van Morrison or Joni Mitchell), you see them pass through philosophies and selves as if through stations of the cross; with Cohen, one feels that he knew who he was and where he was going from the beginning, and only digs deeper, deeper. Listen to the "Master Song" here, and recall that it was written six years before he fell in with a Zen master, Joshu Sasaki-roshi; lose your heart, 35 years later, to "Alexandra Leaving," and remember that he was writing of "Alexandra's double bed" 23 years before, at the beginning of "Death of a Lady's Man." The moon passes through different phases--shows us a different face every night--but it's always the same moon."

Contrast that with Dylan. Dylan changes structure, subject, musical style at the drop of his (sometimes literal) hat. Dylan puts on these styles like disguises. He mixes together all of influences, current and past, to come up with the "new and improved" Dylan grows organically, changing the words and music to fit his mood or the country's mood or just because he's tired of being this year's Bob Dylan. And he doesn't mind making things up as he goes along. He is notorious for speaking jibberish during interviews. Same moon, different solar systems. Neil Diamond. This will be quick. Same song, same words, same inflection, same meaning (or not) now and forever. Same moon, same aspects (preserved forever in crystal clear audio and yours for the low price of ...)

Here's the legal connection. Cohen is like the second John Harlan: the Constitution's principles never change but their meaning cannot be plumbed once and for all. Each new situation will show a different aspect of the fundamental principles. (e.g. ,We can only say what Liberty means in the context of each case as we explore its deeper and deeper meanings. And meaning takes into account our national experience.) Dylan is more like William Brennan: the Constitution is an organic document that changes in each era. (we have to adapt the Constitution to the modern world) Diamond is like the originalists (more Hugo Black than Scalia): the Constitution never changes, period. (Unless the framers envisioned electronic eavesdropping, the fourth amendment does not protect it.) 

 Republicans potrayed Sotomayor as Bob Dylan but she sounded more like Neil Diamond: Roe was "settled law," foreign law should never be considered and a judge only applies the law to the facts. Personally, I would have appreciated her to be a bit more like Leonard Cohen. It may have been easier to repeat the usual magic words and to gut the wisdom that her experience and our nation's experience brings to bear on the legal issues confronting the Court. But, as Leonard Cohen said in Alexandra Leaving, "Do not stoop to strategies like this... Do not choose a coward's explanation that hides behind the cause and the effect." We don't need Neil Diamond on the Supreme Court singing "Sweet Caroline" for the next 30 years and we don't need Bob Dylan making up the lyrics to "Maggie's Farm" on the fly. We could use a Leonard Cohen, who looks unflinchingly and repeatedly at the same subject, exploring its different aspects but never sparing himself (and us) from the sometimes harsh but necessary truth. Let's hope that in 20 years Sonia Sotomayor's greatest hits will be more Cohen than Diamond.

The Importance of Being White

Listening again to Senator Sessions attack on Judge Sotomayor. His witlessness leaves me sputtering but this post by Marie Coco on Alternet captures what is going on:

"It presumes that the white male experience is the only authentically American experience, and therefore the only one that could possibly be unbiased. Whatever predispositions or inclinations these men bring to the law are the valid ones. After all, they are not hampered by some silly notions they may have picked up along the way had they lived their lives as women or as members of minority groups."

Sadly, Judge Sotomayor has to engage in this disingenuous ritual where she must deny what everyone knows: that our experiences influence the way we think. Does anyone seriously believe that the Equal Protection Clause would have provided legal protection to segregation until 1954 if African-american judges had been on the Supreme Court? Or that a mixed gender Supreme Court would not strike down gender discrimination until the 1970's?

Sessions nomination to the federal bench was rejected in 1986 because of racially insensitive remarks. What did he say? Well, he thought the KKK was OK until he found out some members smoked pot, called his african american subordinate "boy" and cautioned him to be careful with what he said to "white folks," wished he could decline all civil rights cases, called the NAACP and ACLU "unamerican" and said they forced civil rights "down the throats of people," and called a white lawyer who prosecuted voting rights cases a "disgrace to his race." And a person with this record presumes to lecture Judge Sotomayor and the rest of us about prejudice?

The Lie About Judge Sotomayor's Reversal Rate

Yesterday Senator Kyl repeated the right wing talking point that Judge Sotomayor's reversal rate by the Supreme Court is a problem. Adding the Ricci case, the Supreme Court reversed 4 of the 6 cases in which she participated that the Court reviewed. Sounds bad, eh? But like much of the slime thrown her way this, too, is not what it seems.

The truth is that most cases decided by the Court of Appeals don't get to the Supreme Court because the court hears only a select few. And of those cases that get there, about 75% are reversed. The Court picks cases when the Courts of Appeals have not agreed. The Court's decision resolves these conflicts and sets precedent for the Courts of Appeals to follow. By this measure, then her reversal rate she's doing better than the average judge. Even if there were some merit to her "alarming" reversal rate, her record shines when compared to Justice Alito's 100% reversal rate when he was nominated by President Bush.

Here is a snapshot of her judicial record: she heard over 3000 cases on the Court of Appeals. She wrote 380 opinions. 5 (6 counting Ricci) were heard by the Supreme Court. 3 (4 counting Ricci) were reversed. So her reversal rate is either 66% (4 out of 6), still less than the average or less than 1% (4 out of 380). And if we only count civil cases, her reversal rate is 4 out of 150.

To use a baseball metaphor (like the Senators), would you refer to Ty Cobb's .366 lifetime batting average- an astounding achievment - by saying that he made an out 64% of the time. A batting average only has meaning in reference to the standard that others have achieved. Thus, most players NEVER hit over .300 so when a player does, it is recognized as exemplary. Similarly, a 60% reversal rate means nothing unless it is put into the context of overall reversal rates.

In his usual thorough way, Nate Silver shows us how to make sense out of these numbers. And for a thorough analysis of her opinions, see the SCOTUS blog.