Empathy – a term used to describe Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor personally and judicially – is poorly understood. Empathy is wrongly described as a ‘feeling’. Empathy is not sympathy. It is the intellectual act of putting yourself in another’s shoes – it is a non-sectarian term for the Golden Rule.

The term comes originally from art criticism: it was argued that the viewers had to pro-actively place themselves into the artist’s mind and heart if they were ever to ‘understand’ the work of art. Empathy is deliberate understanding of the life of others, surely the job of a wise judge.

This was in fact the point Sotomayor made in her now-famous speech in which she talked about perhaps being a wiser Latina than a white man in certain situations. Her final comment is thoughtful - and conveniently overlooked by her critics:

“However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.”