A lot of conservative writers have twisted that argument in the conversation around Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel and said this is identity politics as played by liberals. And that I think what they're trying to say is that progressives are the first to say.
Dahlia LithwickThurgood Marshall was uniquely able to understand and comprehend what it meant to grow up in the Jim Crow south.
Dahlia LithwickAm I right in saying that the locust of this problem is simply that judges in America are half political animals and half oracular demigods?
Dahlia LithwickPulling a crystalline, cogent rule out of the murk of the court's First Amendment, public forum, and Establishment Clause doctrine is an act of creation too complicated for mere mortals.
Dahlia Lithwick