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>>Of course, capability matters. But to imply that we can't have capability and diversity suggests that only white men are capable. There's actually a fair body of research now that says that diverse groups do better at decision-making because they bring diversity of experience and ideas to the table.
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>>More to the point, the story I linked about Ginsburg and the strip search decision is an example of why diversity matters. I think, in the opposite direction, the case that invalidated part of the Voting Rights Act is an example of how lack of diversity hurts. 4 white men (and 1 black man who seems determined to undercut other black people) said that there are no issues around voting rights any more. Since that decision, state after state after state has acted to restrict voting rights. Fortunately, the lower courts mostly aren't letting them get away with it.
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>Tamar, sorry, but these positions are soft-pedaling racism. (Along with soft-pedaling sexism statements about all male courts, completely forgetting the huge landmark Roe v Wade decision). I'm not saying it about you personally, but I do think these are problematic positions.
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>First you say there's a fair body of research that diverse groups do better at decision making. Proof? Links?

This Matt Yglesias piece seems to link a number of articles and meta-sources:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/01/21/diverse_groups_make_better_decisions.html


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>Second, you say that a "black" man who votes along with whites is doing so to "undercut" blacks. (A corollary I often hear is that women who vote "to the right" are doing so to punish other women). I'm about to make up my own term...this is SLS ("sore loser syndrome"). Happens every time a person is disappointed when someone they believe is "one of their own" votes on the other side. (And yes, people on the right do the same thing)
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No, I wasn't making a general statement. I was talking about Clarence Thomas in particular, who has spent his time on the court trying to prove that he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and thus no black person needs or should get help.

>This is what happens when people seek "both" capability and diversity. At the end of the day, you really can't have both. Justice needs to be color-blind and gender-blind and race-blind.

If you say you can't have capability and diversity, you are saying that people other than white males can't be capable.

Beyond that, while blind justice is a wonderful ideal, reality isn't like that. There's plenty of history that says that when only white men are making the decisions around justice, women and people of color don't get equal justice a lot of the time. As I mentioned in another message, I'm reading about the Voting Rights Act and what followed. Surely you agree that in the South of the 1960s (and, of course, earlier), justice was not equal for black people. It's closer equal now because they were enabled to vote and to have those votes actually matter, but that didn't happen because white men ceded power.

Tamar