In the Western legal tradition, the courts are symbolized by Lady Justice, thought to depict the Roman goddess Justitia and the Greek Titan Themis. She holds in one hand a sword, symbolizing the power of the state, and in the other the scales of justice, signifying impartiality. The latter quality is reinforced by her wearing a blindfold, which demonstrates her lack of prejudice as to the parties before her.
In deciding to nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, President Obama apparently gave substantial weight to Lady Justice’s gender — all four of his reported “finalists” were women — but partisans differ on the degree to which he embraced her impartiality. Speaking before Planned Parenthood in 2007, Obama said that his criteria for selecting judges would include having “the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom; the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old.” To detractors, such a statement can be taken to mean ripping the blindfolds off Lady Justice and substituting a jurisprudence in which judges are particularly responsive to the identities of the parties before them.
