Is this quote racist and/or sexist?

[theRepublic]

Sqrl said:

theRepublic said:

Sqrl said:

The edit actually doesn't change my point really. I don't argue against the idea that your experiences shape your biases...that is a given. My contention is that selecting people for those biases as a way to "counteract" (or "balance" if you want to flower it up) other biases is insane because the members will inevitably change leaving the court biased. 

By selecting the least biased people the majority will anchor the bias and prevent it from corrupting.  And like I said nullifying existing bias by adding bias is nullifying the nine justice dynamic and basically making it a 7 justice dynamic...and then a 5 and then 3...and eventually nullified to just 1...and whichever bias occupies the 1 odd seat basically runs the court. It's an absolutely shortsighted way to handle things.

Least bias, most impartial means that you have a stable court where one or two justices allowing bias to get the better of them has no impact.

In short the "counteractive" or "balance" bias approach produces a highly unstable court...the most impartial approach produces a stable court.  The only question once you realize that is whether you want stability in the rule of law...kind of an easy question for me.

You missed my question.  (Damn my edits)

I would call most of the court very partial judges right now, what makes you think this is going to change drastically in the future?

To your point about trying to balance biases, I wouldn't do that, I would just have the court look more like America's demographic makeup.  That is the best you could really expect to do.

I agree actually, I think the court is very politcized right now, but I'm not talking about what it is, but rather what it should be.

To your last point: So you're advocating that the court have a bias that is representative of america and that their rulings should reflect the bias of america on average?

I don't understand why you would advocate for the intentional introduction of bias...of any makeup.  Why not aim for the most impartial application of law we can manage as imperfect as we are?  Saying you will always have bias is one thing, but it doesn't mean that we have to accept bias as part of the decisions when we have a 9 judge dynamic that is specifically designed to handle this exact issue. 

Not to mention, and I'm sure you'll hate me for pointing it out, but your argument is again assuming that everyone of a given race thinks alike.  If you take it as a given that people of one race don't all think alike then nominating based on race, by your own logic, is absolutely pointless.  Not everybody from one race is going to have the same views so the claim that somehow a 9 person sample is even remotely meaningful defies basic statistics. I actually just did a quick calculation and with a population of 300 million and a sample of 9, barring sampling error (which would exist), you have a margin of error of nearly 33.3% meaning your range of error is 66.6% (MOE is +/-). This means that by basic statistics if we select justices to represent america we will almost always end up not representing america.

The entire idea is simply flawed.

 

First bold

So you are actually talking about some sort of ideal world where people can actually know their own biases and selectively filter them out?  How do these impartial judges get selected?  It wouldn't happen the way judges are selected now.  How do you suggest the Constitution be amended to change the selection process?

Second bold

No it doesn't.  It assumes that people of different backgrounds have different life experience.