*I love that Judge Sonia (I feel I can call her that, ’cause she’s one of us) is making the Supreme Court cool. She writes a scathing dissent about unreasonable searches and seizures and wins the internet! VL
By Victora M. Massie, Vox (2.5 minute read)
In an impassioned dissent Monday, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor broke with the majority of the court in a case about unreasonable searches and seizures, citing James Baldwin’s and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s written experiences of constantly being viewed as criminally suspect as black people in America.
The case, Utah v. Strieff, examined whether it was constitutional for evidence collected unlawfully by a police officer to be used as evidence in court. In 2006, Utah Narcotics Detective Douglas Fackrell stopped Edward Strieff Jr. in Salt Lake City based on an anonymous tip about potential drug activity, discovered an outstanding warrant, arrested him, and found drug paraphernalia.
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In a 5-3 decision, the Court reversed the Utah Supreme Court decision that the illegal stop disqualified the evidence. Instead, the Supreme Court ruled that the evidence did not violate the Fourth Amendment . . . READ MORE
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Suggested reading
Born in the early part of the twentieth century, George Washington Gómez is named after the American rebel and hero because his parents are certain their son will be a great man too. George, or Guálinto as he’s known, grows up in turbulent times. His family has lived for generations in what has become Texas. “I was born here. My father was born here and so was my grandfather and his father before him. And then they come, they come and take it, steal it and call it theirs,” his Uncle Feliciano rages.
The Texas Mexicans’ attempts to take back their land from the Gringos and the rinches—the brutal Texas Rangers—fail. Guálinto’s father, who never participated in the seditionist violence, is murdered in cold blood, and Feliciano makes a death-bed promise to raise his nephew without hatred.
Young Guálinto comes of age in a world where Mexicans are treated as second-class citizens. Teachers can beat and mistreat them with impunity, and most of his Mexican-American friends drop out of school at a young age. But the Gómez family insists that he continue his education, which he will need in order to do great things for his people. And so his school years create a terrible conflict within him: Guálinto alternately hates and admires the Gringo, loves and despises the Mexican. Written in the 1930s but not published until 1990, George Washington Gómez has become mandatory reading for anyone interested in Mexican-American literature, culture and history.
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