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Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation to the United State Supreme Court is an uber-historic landmark that goes to the core of our nationhood.
The United States of America is intentionally a nation-state designed for inclusion of its citizens. We are defined by it. It is so self-evident that new naturalized citizens, when they are sworn in, receive a booklet, The Citizen’s Almanac, that says a citizen has the right to express himself, to worship as he wishes, is entitled to a prompt and fair trial when accused, to keep and bear arms, to vote, to apply for federal employment, to run for elective office, and is free to pursue life, liberty and happiness.
The Supreme Court safeguards these participations as they are codified in law and enshrined in the Constitution.
Reality also tells us that the nation’s ideals were compromised from the beginning by permitting slavery and the Three-Fifths Compromise that counted slaves as parts and not wholes for determining the number of delegates to the House of Representatives.
Legal and policy struggles about our populations have been highlighted like that ever since in the use of political power when it serves some and not others. Often, the Supreme Court, as the third branch of the federal government, balances between the literal and intended national purpose in a law.
Take, for instance, in the 1954 Hernández v. Texas case when Latino lawyers Gustavo García, Carlos Cadena and John J. Herrera were the first Mexican Americans to plead before the Court.
In that case, Pete Hernández claimed he had been unconstitutionally convicted in a murder case because he had not been tried by a jury of his peers. The state of Texas claimed that there was no discrimination because the state considered Mexican Americans white. The Latino lawyers argued that no Latino had ever served on a jury in Edna, Texas, where the act occurred, had ever had a Latino serve. Proof of social prejudice was evident in the courthouse restroom with its sign prohibiting Mexican Americans from using the “white” facility.
Cadena, before the nine justices, described this Mexican-American population, as there was little national consciousness about it. “What
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