From Anita Hill to Sonia Sotomayor

New York Times, Sunday, July 19, 2009

"Flashback
Women on the Verge of the Law: From Anita Hill to Sonia Sotomayor"

Jill Abramson

A lone woman sits at the witness table, hoping her Yale law degree will help her survive a charged Supreme Court confirmation hearing. She faces a battery of powerful white senators on the Judiciary Committee, a contrast that cannot help but make her look like easy pickings. The Senate committee that Judge Sonia Sotomayor faced last week has two women. When Anita Hill testified there were none. Anita Hill testified before an all-male Judiciary Committee in 1991.

That was the tableau inside the Senate Judiciary Committee back in 1991, when Anita Hill leveled her accusations of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas, who had been nominated for the Supreme Court by President George H. W. Bush. But the scene was repeated last week as Judge Sonia Sotomayor took her seat at the table. Although in this tableau she was the nominee and not the opposition witness — and although there was little of the raw tension and none of the unhinged free-for-all that characterized the earlier proceedings — there were unmistakable echoes.

For the rest of this interesting article go to: Flashback - Women on the Verge of the Law - From Anita Hill to Sonia Sotomayor

Also, check out NY Times Op-Ed writer Frank Rich "They Got Some 'Splainin' to Do":

"The hearings were pure “Alice in Wonderland.” Reality was turned upside down. Southern senators who relate every question to race, ethnicity and gender just assumed that their unreconstructed obsessions are America’s and that the country would find them riveting. Instead the country yawned. The Sotomayor questioners also assumed a Hispanic woman, simply for being a Hispanic woman, could be portrayed as The Other and patronized like a greenhorn unfamiliar with How We Do Things Around Here. The senators seemed to have no idea they were describing themselves when they tried to caricature Sotomayor as an overemotional, biased ideologue. "... see the entire article:

Op-Ed Columnist - They Got Some ’Splainin’ to Do - NYTimes.com