I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.—Sonya Sotomayor

It has long been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression (although I do not choose to put it into a newspaper, nor like a Priam in armor to offer myself as its champion), that the germ of dissolution of our Federal Government is in the constitution of the Federal Judiciary; an irresponsible body (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow), working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little to-day and a little to-morrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one. To this I am opposed; because, when all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated. It will be, as in Europe, where every man must be either pike or gudgeon, hammer or anvil. Our functionaries and theirs are wares from the same workshop; made of the same materials and by the same hand. If the States look with apathy on this silent descent of their government into the gulf which is to swallow all, we have only to weep over the human character formed uncontrollable but by a rod of iron, and the blasphemers of man, as incapable of self-government, become his true historians.—Thomas Jefferson, From a letter to C. Hammond

Jefferson was warning about two different things.  One was the danger of a strong centralized government, like we have now.  The other was the primary role that the judiciary would have in creating a strong centralized government through ongoing judicial activism.   The phrase “the checks provided of one government on another” means the checks that one US state provides on the others.   In other words, having a decentralized government is essential to freedom.

Supreme Court judges are not selected because they are socially neutral.  They are selected for political and social engineering purposes.

Be vigilant.

Stumble it!