Diabetes and Supreme Court Judge - really an issue?
This is too disturbing not to blog about immediately. Seems that Obama’s frontrunning pick for a seat on the Supreme Court has come under scrutiny for having Type 1 diabetes. Judge Sonia Sotomayor (pictured at right) of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has had diabetes since childhood, a fact which has the DC blog and news circuit buzzing about whether that should be considered in her ability to serve. Specifically, they have concerns about her tenure in the position considering her “health issues.”
Jeff Toobin, CNN legal Analyst and author of “The Nine: Inside The Secret World of the Supreme Court.” had this to say:
“It is obligatory [to look at this]. The issue of duration of service for a Supreme Court nominee is critical to any president, and thus health and medical issues are very much at the forefront of their considerations… It would be irresponsible for any president not to make the health of the nominee a major subject of concern, because presidents want decades of service from their nominees.”
It is clear that the main concern is not that she may get low during a hearing and suddenly blurt out “guilty as charged” (which happens to me ALL the time, I tell ya…) but more so that complications of diabetes will shorten her lifespan or affect her ability to serve. But is it fair to evaluate her on something that “might happen” and has been proven to generally not happen if diabetes is well cared for? Couldn’t all Supreme Court judges potentially suffer from a variety of health conditions that could impair their ability to serve? In fact, it seems like diabetes, which has been shown to be a manageable disease, would be preferred to any acute illness or disease most often encountered by adults over 50 – such as heart disease, cancer and stroke?
Amazing that after all we’ve fought for, this is still up for debate. Readers, what do you think? Should this be part of the criteria Sonia is evaluated on?
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Comments
I don’t think it should be taken into consideration. If she’s had good control and is not suffering from any complications that would impede her then it shouldn’t be an issue. I bet there’s a lot of diabetics (especially type 1’s) who are healthier than people without diabetes. In fact, I know there are.
You know what they say right? For the best health, get a chronic disease and take care of it! Its amazing this has even come up as an issue, in this day and age. RG you make an interesting point - this might not be so controversial if people weren’t already looking for shortcomings in our new prez. Either way, publicity like this does not do anything to help people with diabetes break through those stereotypes of what it means to live with it. It only fuels the misconception that diabetes has to be a debilitating disease. I’ve said this many times and I truly live by the statement: well controlled diabetes is the leading cause of nothing.
You know, if it were a *Republican* president electing a candidate with Type 1 diabetes, this would not be an issue for the people bringing it up now. Politics as usual.