Work Smarter, Not Harder, Sonia.

Her calls for "diversity" are galling.

Why, in academia and scholastics, do we throw out standards of measurement in the field?  Natural ability is wonderful, and working harder -- spending hours and hours in practice -- indeed can improve many performances.  But...  I don't care how many hours you put in, how many private coaches and tutors they hire, some children just are not going to make the NBA.  Skillswise, their talents will never rise to that elite level compared to the other competitors.  Ditto in academics.

Keep working hard, Sonia. But please do not disrespect the others competing, with "lesser" personal characteristics in your eyes (= fair skin, hair, eyes), who continually best the performance of you, and your peoples, if you are choosing to identify in that ugly and divisive way as an alleged leader and inspiration in your field.  Lady justices are better blindfolded. Males too.

"If you are a person of color, you have to work harder than everybody else to succeed," Sotomayor said. "It's the nature of -- the competitive nature of our society -- where you have to prove yourself every day." 

"And I don't know many people of color who don't come into this enterprise without feeling that pressure of knowing that they have to work harder," she said.

Justices are better seen, through their work product, and not heard.  Too often, "diversity" means the louder and bigger who bull their way through -- black and white, male and female -- overstepping others with their demands and rule changes until they can rig the outcomes more to their likings.  Ex-athletes, looking for a second career after they've dedicated their early lives to studying one sport, often are convinced that their excellence in a physical area carries over to other fields.  Often, we humor them...

"Fame in the 20th Century" by Clive James -- the companion book to the PBS series -- is an interesting read set alongside recent celebrity justice comments like Sotomayor, hoping to pick up the legacy of the late "RBG"  ("You down with RBG?" Yeah, you know me! Who down with RBG? not so cool, with each passing year...)

I hope the Court understands the importance of upholding standards for all identity classes alike, including laws that apply to all of us regardless of our skin color.  If regions want to pass special rules -- like which medical procedures are allowed, or which criminal practices are de-criminalized -- bully for them!  But more and more, the Court's role is to make sure that the Constitution is followed.

The pattern set out there is what some refer to as the "laboratories of democracy":  fifty big and little laboratories, not counting DC and the territories. The different life values and cultures in different regions will determine the local laws and rule-making policies and procedures the populations living there choose to adopt and enforce.  Yes, even in this 21st advanced century.  Law enforcement is local, so is legislating.  

A wise Court knows this -- the whites and blacks, catholics and jews, and latinx too!

For the best of the country in the years to come, pray the current Court has the strength not to make it about themselves, but to understand their limited role in making decisions for the nation as a whole.  That role -- whether the Elite trust us or not -- belongs to the American people, the citizens who elect the representatives who are held accountable for their own votes on our behalf.

If the system as whole is to hold, we need a strong Court in action embracing its limited role, and directing the important decisions that follow public and open discussions on weighty societal issues back onto the American people.  

It's not for nine robed persons to decide these issues of importance;  it's for them to understand and lead us on who makes the rules, who is overstepping the rulemaking, whose Constitutional rights are being overstepped in the rulemaking (not at all the same as simply losing as a discrete and insular minority, as the footnote attests), and what courts should be deciding which things.

I trust the nine currently on the bench understand the Rule of Law better than the uneducated legal scholars with opinions not on Constitutional legality, but on the importance of the social issues themselves.  

If the Court is wise enough to steer these issues back to the people with opinions who rightfully believe in many cases and places that their own decision-making abilities are being usurped by the Elites elsewhere, I think we've still got us a country with a strong democracy.

All we can really do now, speaking for myself and my home, is pray that our leaders on the Court are guided by wisdom in simply doing the jobs they were not elected to do.  God bless America, again just my own fervent hope; you and he and she are free to pray or not for your own wishes too.  

In America, that's the beauty part.