In discharging their constitutional duty to provide advice and, if they deem appropriate, give consent to President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, Senators should examine the critical importance the president attaches to empathy...

While the recent Supreme Court decision in the New Haven firefighters' case will be welcome news to those who don't think that a gross injustice is O.K. when those on the receiving end are white, the reasoning behind the 5 to 4 decision is a painful reminder that the law is still tangled in a web of assumptions, evasions and contradictions when it comes to racial issues...

The debate over Palin is sort of ossified...

Earlier today, Muslims demonstrated in Antwerp to oppose the banning of headscarves in two schools–and the new Swedish head of the European Union, Justice Minister Beatrice Ask, stated that the “27 member European Union must not dictate an Islamic dress code…(that) the European Union is a union of freedom.”...