Sonia Sotomayor Tapped For Hight Court

Please, bear with you?

I'm still waiting for someone to explain how math and reading skills are prone to bias. . .

 

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But the law cuts both ways. Look, I'm sure there is legal precedent for non-discrimination. If you wipe out the results because too many people of any one group made the cut, then this is discriminatory. What if I offered transfer among my grad students from MSc to PhD, then cancelled it because too many Indians passed? This would be discriminatory.

Scrutiny, not illegality. En passant, you admit that the decision was indeed a decision, and not some (pardon the term) black-and-white automatic call.

Presumption.

People's support of judicial activism comes and goes with the issue of the day. It's nonsensical to pretend otherwise.

Which you assume at the outset to be correct. No? I didn't believe that law was about expediency; or that it wasn't supposed to be, anyway. And: "a number"? Ok, what number? Two? What is reasonable?

"The magnitude of the racial disparity" has not been defined. A standard deviation of difference? Two? Percent of the mean? Number of questions right or wrong?

Rendering it unimportant. Stop the business of the day, for the King's contest is not yet settled. Don't be silly.

....and how is this in the slightest way racial? Latinos and blacks don't know where "uptown" and "downtown" are? You don't make this clear.

This isn't in any way justified by your example above. Nor, moreover, does one or two bad questions mean that the entire exam is poorly constructed, unless you can demonstrate otherwise.

Then this needs to be demonstrated.

Which is all fine, but ultimately not the heart of the matter. We're not discussing a bad test that was pulled because of its irrelevancy. We're discussing a set of results that were pulled because of skew in the outcome of the test takers related to their race. Your comment above does not relate to the "heart of the matter".

And then to withdraw all consideration because of the racial skew of results. I would call this a denial of opportunity.

Allow me to be blunt: what the fuck are you talking about? Which excuses am I specifically making (your words), and how am I making them? Be specific.

No. The decision, uniformly, is a racist one. Of the other two judges, I have no further data, and neither are being considered for a seat on the High Court, but I would oppose on the same grounds in all probability. Still, Sotomayor has made at least one other openly racist claim, and she's the issue at hand. The one you're so worked up about.

I would, if it were in any way funny.

That may be the most specious answer possible.

Not in the slightest. Your seizing and shaking this point as if something heinous ought to fall out - rather than comprehending it as a simple statement of fact - illustrates your fanatical naivety.

Oh Tiassa, if your descent into ad hominem was anything noteworthy, I would let you know. But it happens all the time. Instead of conceding - just for a second - that maybe the other side has a reasoned and respectable argument, you drop into childish name-calling once you're confronted with the irrefutable fact that you're wrong about their intentions. It's fairly obvious - or should be - that I don't have anything against Democratic selectees to the High Court. But, when I state this very pointedly, so as not to let any confusion remain in the discussion, you have a small fit. "Waah, wahh, why won't you fit in my pigeon-hole?" and so forth. Perhaps it's time you took a break to assess your independence of thought on this issue.

On basis of the above and her comments about her special wisdom on being a Latina.

Thanks,

Geoff​

 

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Good God. That's a good answer. I'm going to keep that in mind.

Thanks, String.

 

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Funny, for all the bad press it gets, Walmart taught me more about the philosophy of leading people (we did a lot of book, theoretical and roll-playing education) than any other company I've worked for. And I've worked for a good number of them: TGI Fridays, Brinker Intnl., Progressive, Liberty Mutual, Gap, Target, Walmart, Costco and my current employer. None spent as much time on their managers as Walmart, which is odd, since I never worked for company that had such high turn-over in its management areas.

~String

 

Leadership thread started in the Ethics, Morality, & Justice sub-forum.

What Is Leadership?

~String

 

This still seems so really simple to me that I don't get why it riled people so much.

I think it's that the nature of the legal question and the burden of "burden of proof" are not being considered. The City decided to set aside the test because of its being discriminatory ("unfair" in the words of their City's internal counsel). There has a been a lot of clamoring for the city (or posters here) to "prove" the unfairness of the test, but that is not the question that would have initially been raised in court.

Black, white or other, if you sue someone alleging racial discrimination, the burden is on *you* you prove it. The burden is not on the defendant for "prove" anything until the plaintiff has done so first.

The plaintiffs here can easily prove disparate racial impact (which is evidence in their favor) because the city's decision disproportionately impacted white candidates. Unfortunately, the city has an obvious counter claim of disproportionate impact...that the test disproportionately impacts minority candidates if left in place, so much so that it would trigger automatic scrutiny under federal guidelines.

So, while disparate impact is relevant, it's a wash. Did the city set aside the test "because the 'winners' were mostly white" or "because the 'losers' were disproportionately non-whites?" Until technology develops a very finely tuned way of seeing people's secret hearts, those two formulations are largely the same. In this case, there is a disproportionate impact on some group no matter which way this case went. As a result the burden of proof never shifted from the plaintiffs.

That is all the plaintiffs seem to have had though. They seem to have offered no attempt to prove that the test was "fair" and that is (while tough to do) the only clear way to rebut the presumption that the City did nothing wrong. And, to be clear, that is the presumption. There is nothing in the law that makes State government actors guilty (or liable) until proven otherwise.

To argue that the City should *not* have set aside the test is not the question the Court faced. It is a fair question, but it's a policy question, with the legal question being bound up in the notion in the burden of proof.

I would suggest that if the law were changed so that defendants bore the burden of proof, the City would have lost at the appeal. In that case, the city would have pointed to the disparate impact on the minorities an d the plaintiffs would have pointed at the impact on themselves. Again a wash. The city would then have needed to bring in experts to prove something about the test to have been biased, which I assume they would have had a hard time doing conclusively, as the plaintiff would also have brought in experts. With the burden of proof on the City I don't see them meeting the burden.

It just so happens that the law places the burden on the other side, and plenty of sympathetic minorities lose discrimination claims each year as a result.

 

D'oh. I also started a similiar thread using your quote as the jumping off point It's called what is a good leader and is in the economics and business subforum (I wasn't really sure wher to put it). Someone ought to merge them.
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=93529

 

Hmm. I can see that. A (seemingly) personable firm in a cut-throat environment? Or the friendly fellows with the edge of cold industrialization at your throat?

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Sorry. Can't get past my distrust of anything corporate.

True; yet the same approach would apply to any suits following the acceptance of the test results for advancement. While there might be relatively more such suits (although I can't actually say for sure), the principle would be the same.

I think it could have been argued that the summary rejection of the test - as a benchmark of eligibility for promotion - because there were not enough minority beneficiaries could be take as "proof". Still, I'm not "proof-positive" about this, probably largely because the notion of "proof" is a professionally and utterly alien concept to me. I only deal in probability. Nothing in biology is really ever completely "proven".

Okay, I'll step outside proper boundaries here and argue that such a case could indeed be 'proven', if indeed such racial study disparity as described above occurs (which I don't know). At least you could establish some kind of precedent?

Probably true. From a completely unbiased perspective, I can't say that such losses reflect real discrimination or not, but I do understand the issues around Title VII and the socioeconomics at stake. Still, the law is a double-edged sword, and the burden of proof must cut both ways. I may have been unfair to Sotomayor in the example of New Haven - it may or may not have been simple expediency...although I do like to rile up Tiassa - but I still wouldn't put her on the bench in the same way that I wouldn't put anyone associated with the Jim Crow laws on the bench (a senator in the GOP, I believe, was associated with them) or have an ex-KKK member in my party. Was there no one else equally qualified? No one at all? Hard to believe.

Thanks for taking the time for a reasoned response and avoiding the use of ad hominem attacks, which obviously serve nothing.

Best,

Geoff

 

? Please. Your silly opinion there, stated as always as if it were fact, is simply wrong - you are labeling as my lies things which are your own misreadings and misunderstandings and presumptions and general fatheaded belligerence - in the recent manifestation, starting with that Iran Contra/Iran Hostage post error of yours, and going downhill from there. I have no control over this habit I can't do anything about it.It's the price I pay for logging in here - to endure a certain amount of shit-flinging from you and your buddies. You guys call it "substance", but then you also devote much ocomical posting to bragging about how you admit mistakes, deal in facts, etc - stuff that could be lifted direcly by Stephen Colbert, and quite possibly has been - so your judgment in such matters (and your personal character) is elegantly illustrated.

Uh, no. There are apparently some real dangers in taking countzero seriously. Reread the post at issue, the first one that launched your latest project here, and find the part where I referred to this forum and Political Compass. That's what I'm talking about - the stuff I actually posted, my own arguments, etc. Count's take on my posting is another subject entirely, belonging in its own thread, and you can assume I'm ignoring it unless I specifically address it.

There is, of course, no such thing as a single poll that could show anything like that. As I mentioned, you obviously don't know what I'm talking about in the first place. But that's not as big a problem as your willingness to go barreling off on such meaningless, irrelevant tangents in these threads.

No, it isn't.

God damn, but that's funny. Are we not in the middle of discussing exactly that? That exact basis cited in that exact ruling by the three judge panel including Sotomayor? A major topic on this thread ? Hello?

They aren't. The teaching and testing of them is. The testing of them is a thread topic. If you are actually curious, which I don't believe, Claude Steele's stuff is a reasonable inroad.

 

Um. No. Read the finding. The court decided ONLY that the city had the right to throw the results out NOT that the in and of itself was biased. Go read it. Or is that too much for you to do? Wait. Lemme' guess: Your opinions are facts... again. Is this gonna end up being another Iceaura "George Bush Is Gay" and "The Onion is a reliable source of info on the Bush White House" type argument with nothing of substance provided by you and LOTS of fluff?

Ricci, et al. v. Destefano, et al

(See: that above link is what we call a reliable FACT, ice. Try it some time)

~String

 

Sigh.

From this:

Once again, slowly:

The burden of proof was and is the matter at hand in thoise posts - and the basis for the court's decision, a major topic of this thread, the subject of the post you wanted backed up with something verifiable - - like a Federal court case. This has nothing to do with a court determining that the test was biased - nothing whatsoever. The issue at hand is what Pandemonium here has been referring to as something so simple he seems a bit baffled by the postings he is seeing on this thread. He doesn't "get" why you guys are so "riled".

I'm not baffled. I'm very familiar with the limits of what you guys can handle by way of argument, for one thing, and I know that you aren't riled - this is what you are like all the time.

On second thought, maybe it's that I'm not surprised - it is a bit baffling. It's no fun, for starters - there's an entire world of humor and innuendo and entertaining discussion out there, if you'd give it a chance.

Now how about reread what you just posted, compare with the rest of the thread, and figure things out on your own, without any more thuggery?

 

I'm sorry but it goes a little deeper than that.

Out of charity (I feel sorry for you, I really do), I'll give you the Iran Contra gaff, but I'm not going to look past the inaccuracies you have posted in recent weeks because they are multiple and flagrant -- both of which denote a pattern of some kind: You stated a factual error about the CIA budget process; You grossly mis-characterized the Niger incident; And you made a factual error about the Downing Memo. So far, I've seen no retraction. Typically, after the error of your ways has been reported, you slip and slide to another topic and pretend your mistake was never said.

This forum and the political compass are hardly indicative of anything, and I can't imagine citing them as substantive "proof" of anything and expecting others to take me seriously. But you can. . .

 

We have what's called a difference of opinion when discussions are honest; but they aren't here, and so instead I simply hold you and yours in complete contempt.

That is, I not only think you are wrong about all that stuff, but I also think you have no business dragging it from thread to thread for months, shitting all over this forum with your obsession about what you are "going to look past" - at least not until you can, at a minimum, paraphrase one or two of my posts accurately. There's a pattern here, for sure, and it's the standard playground bully routine - but it's gone on long enough, don't you think? Someone like you cannot bully someone like me in a venue like this. It doesn't work. You make too many stupid mistakes about my posts, and you degenerate too quickly to temper tantrums. Give it up, and find adult employment for your time.

They were presented as indicative of this forum, and Political Compass. Do you know some reason they would not be?

Meanwhile, that unanimous multiple judge panel ruling upholding another judge's ruling on appeal is the only racially sensitive case in Sotomayor's judicial career that has received close national attention, apparently. Her ruling that the New York City Police department could not fire a police officer for extreme racial bigotry publicly expressed off the job, for example, seems to be comparatively unfamiliar to Fox News viewers.

Especially puzzling is the Rightsquad media's failure to sound off on cases easily presented as indicating her willingness to subjugate US law to international treaties - normally a big deal with that media faction. Her ruling that international air transport services owned by Americans and transporting Americans were not bound by US racial discrimination laws, but rather by the treaties governing international air travel, and could apply different standards to people based on race alone if they wanted to, would make a dandy basis for some accusations about Obama's agenda of "world government" and the like, eh?

 

Actually I did some more reading and discovered that I was wrong. Because it is so hard to show boas the law usues a special test that does not l;eave the burden entirelyt on the plaintiff.

First the plaintiff must show a it has prima facie case for discrimination.

Then the burden shifts to the defendant to show that it had a non-discriminatory reason for the action. (That reason shown need not be ion the *only* one, so long as it supports the actions being disputed on its own.)

Finally, the burden shifts again to the plaintiff, who has to show that the proffered non-discriminatory reason is a mere pretext.

I think they lose even worse under that standard, unless the Supreme Court wants to overrule it. They have a prima facie case, but the City can show pretty conclusively
that it had a non-discriminatory reason here...and the plaintiffs even admitted it: the test's results violated federal legal guidelines and the City was trying to prevent an automatic investigation by the Justice Department that would have ensued. Everyone seems to agree the city was motivated by this...and it is clearly an independent consideration from the race of the people involved in teh controversy.

Imagine if the opposite were true. Suppose the City cannot void the test on the grounds that they want to avoid the investigation. The city either loses money when the plaintiffs sue, or they lose money trying to defend themselves during teh investigation (and god forbid that they investigators find the test actionable). That's a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" rule of law. (Unless the Supreme Court wants to argue pay for every local governments legal fees during such an investigation out of its judicial budget.)

I can see wanting to change the federal investigatory standards. I can see wanting the feds to reimburse the local government for all costs incurred as a result of the investigation. I can't see the Supreme Court, let alone Sotomayor, ruling on any of those issues.

Again, though, the Court never had to touch on the fairness of the test itself, as it was not one of the legal issues before them. Their inquiry was "is the desire to avoid a federal inquiry a 'racially biased' motivation" and the court said "no".

So I was mistaken, but it still seems pretty clear cut.