Source: Trump, Christie and Judicial Impartiality

That neither race, ethnicity, nor gender presumptively bars a judge or juror from passing impartially on a case is deeply embedded in our law.  Only a week ago in Foster v. Chatman, Warden the Supreme Court vacated a capital conviction because the Prosecutor arbitrarily excluded prospective jurors who, like the defendant, were African American.

That an African American judge may pass on matters in which race is relevant is deeply embedded in our law, as is the corollary principal that female may pass on women’s issues.  The landmark judicial opinion on the issue is Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Local 542, 388 F. Supp. 155 (974).  there Judge A. Leon Higgiinbotham, later Chief Judge of the Third Circuit, repudiated the proposition asserted in a motion to disqualify him in a class action alleging discrimination by a building trades union. He wrote:…