Would U.S. Supreme Court confirmation for Judge Sonia Sotomayor turn back the clock on justice and American Jurisprudence? That’s what Jeff Deskovic has suggested, joining an increasingly alarming chorus of detractors including none other than the Supreme Court itself, which has overturned more of her rulings than it has of anyone else seeking the SCOTUS bench. There are also the innocent firemen who were discriminated against based on race, which is the latest case the Supreme Court has overturned, deciding instead that Martin Luther King’s vision of a color blind society follows the spirit of the Constitution and the days of superficial racial or gender discrimination for any reason have finally gone the way of the dinosaurs.

Deskovic’s story, however, adds yet another twist to the multifaceted forms of injustice Sotomayor has stood behind over the course of her career. Deskovic, who has written an article for Politico recently, was wrongly convicted of murder in 1990 and eventually served 16 years before he was fully exonerated, but no thanks to Sotomayor, who, as records show, played a crucial part in Deskovic’s serving six years of that sentence. The high court nominee, apparently showing the way she rules with compassion, essentially threw out a request for review on a weak technicality and tersely refused to examine any of the merits of the case.

Sotomayor claims she will let empathy cloud her judgment of matters of the law. If this is the case, one wonders where her empathy lies. We know where judicial empathy as a veil for bias has taken American jurisprudence in the past; for that one need only look at Henry Billings Brown, the author of Plessy v. Ferguson or Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, author of the Dredd Scott case. The historical reality is that treating others as inferiors due to genetics causes immeasurable harm to individuals and to the tranquility of society, which our Constitution was created to promote.

Indeed, Deskovic’s situation looks as if it could have been the perfect case for Sotomayor, who could have demonstrated her ability to both be empathetic and follow the law. Sotomayor would not have acted outside the law to review the details of Deskovic’s case and she would have shown empathy for someone who turned out to be wrongfully accused. She would also have demonstrated proper judicial awareness that across the country today many are enjoying freedom once more after someone was willing to examine their cases and worked to undo convictions for crimes they did not commit. In a great many such cases, DNA is the key factor in exonerations; something that was ignored in Deskovic’s initial prosecution. Deskovic has since gone on to earn his undergraduate degree and is currently working on a master’s.

If anything, Sotomayor may be empathetic, but only in very selective ways, applying perhaps Obama’s brand of redistributive social justice based on 19^th Century ideas about race or gender trumping character. In other words, quite antithetical to the ideals of progress America has stood for, as well as its Constitution. The fact that she is neither white nor male obviously does not change the immorality of it no more than it would change the immorality of murder. And in a sense, that is a bit of what has been done to Mr. Deskovic, who will never have 16 years of his life back.

Naturally, as the argument from the left goes, those who oppose Sotomayor are themselves racists; however, it was a Republican president who appointed the first Hispanic to the D.C. Circuit Court and it was the Democrats who shot it down, specifically stating they were doing it because he was Hispanic and they feared he was being readied for a seat on the Supreme Court. That was not 1950; rather, it was early in the last administration, when President Bush nominated Miguel Estrada to that spot. In one memo which has since surfaced, Democrat Senate Judiciary Committee members are told that Miguel Estrada has been "identified … as especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment. They want to hold Estrada off as long as possible."

The content of Sotomayor’s character suggests that she is particularly interested in turning the clock back, making America less a country of ideas, innovation, and character, and more about primal superficialities that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with who we all are as human beings. But then again, this seems to be the mantra of the left these days. In this, she has failed, egregiously, to show the temperance, understanding of the law, text or spirit, or what it means to be an American, and as such draws into serious question her ability to perform the sworn duties expected of one who is appointed to the bench for life on the highest U.S. court or any other public office.