The name Grace Helen Whitener didn’t mean anything to me, but upon learning that she was appointed to the Washington State Supreme Court, I naturally assumed she’s an accomplished lawyer at the very least. Wikipedia provides a little information.
Whitener was born and raised in Trinidad. She moved to the United States when she was 16 to receive medical care. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Marketing and Trade from Baruch College, followed by a Juris Doctor from the Seattle University School of Law.
After graduating from law school, Whitener worked as a public defender, prosecutor, and private defense attorney. She served as a judge on the Board of Industrial Insurance Appeals for two years and then on the Pierce County Superior Court from 2015 to 2020, having been appointed by Governor Inslee and elected unopposed in 2015 and 2016. She assumed office on the Washington Supreme Court on April 13, 2020. She will run for election in 2020 for the remaining two years of Wiggins’s term.
An interesting path to the bench, given her experience with criminal law and her undistinguished education. As someone who knows nothing more about her than this cursory information, I’m prepared to assume she was a terrific lawyer and excellent judge before her appointment to the Supreme Court. After all, why else would the governor appoint her?
“Being a black, gay, female, immigrant, disabled judge … my perspective is a little different,” said Justice Grace Helen Whitener.
That may well be, but the job is judge, not “black, gay, female, immigrant, disabled” advocate.
While the federal bench grows more homogeneous by the day, Democratic governors are diversifying their state judiciaries to an unprecedented degree. On Monday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, elevated Grace Helen Whitener to the state Supreme Court. Whitener is a disabled black lesbian who immigrated from Trinidad. She joins Inslee’s two other appointees: Raquel Montoya-Lewis, a Jewish Native American who previously served on tribal courts, and Mary Yu, an Asian-American Latina lesbian who officiated the first same-sex marriages in the state.
Is Justice Whitener a smart, experienced and fair justice? What about Justice Montoya-Lewis, or Justice Yu? Do they rule based on the law or rule for whoever most closely aligns with their “identities”? The issue isn’t whether the judiciary should be drawn from the full universe of qualified people available, whether male or female, black or white, one-legged or two. To do otherwise would both be discriminatory and deprive the public of the best qualified person to sit on the bench.
But that’s the point, that the person is the best qualified, not the most intersectional.
I try to make sure that everyone that comes into this courtroom feels welcome, feels safe, and feels like they will get a fair hearing.
That courtrooms are the place for feeling welcome and safe is a dubious notion; neither litigants nor lawyers are there to pet puppies, nor should they be. They are there because they’ve been arrested or sued. It’s not a happy place. But that Justice Whitener wants people to “feel like they will get a fair hearing” strikes closer to the mark.
But do they? When a judge is promoted based not on knowledge and experience, but on immigrant status and sexual orientation, it might play to one small audience who shares these characteristics but it’s unlikely to make the vast majority of litigants feel warm and fuzzy. Do all people who appear before the court count or only those who share some of the judge’s “intersections”?
Will Justice Whitener make straight white men “feel like they will get a fair hearing”? What about African-American immigrants from Nigeria, because there’s a bit of inter-racial competition between African blacks and Caribbean blacks. And while there’s no clue what Justice Whitener’s “disability” is, since it’s no longer polite to specify challenges even if its mandatory that they be noted on their intersectional chart, can she fairly judge people who can’t see or hear, or worse yet, can?
That a justice of the Washington Supreme Court has been reduced to her simplistic identitarian components by Mark Joseph Stern at Slate, with no room left over to bother to mention whether she possesses any of the qualitities or qualifications one would desire in a judge, is offensive to the people of Washington and insulting to the judge.
I’m fully prepared to believe that she is eminently qualified to sit as a justice of the Washington State Supreme Court, based upon her experience, qualifications and temperament, and that she will be a brilliant and fair jurist. But there’s no way I could tell from what’s written about her, and Justice Whitener being “black, gay, female, immigrant, disabled” person is no reason to put her on the bench.
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