{"id":3085,"date":"2016-03-10T13:15:57","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T13:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/globalpress.hinduismnow.org?p=3082&preview_id=3082"},"modified":"2016-03-10T13:15:57","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T13:15:57","slug":"what-would-a-hindu-justice-mean-for-the-supreme-court-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/?p=3085","title":{"rendered":"What would a Hindu justice mean for the Supreme Court? – The Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Obama has narrowed his list of potential Supreme Court nominees to about six names, our colleagues on The Post politics staff report.<\/p>\n

One jurist in the running, whose name has been floated for the Supreme Court starting almost immediately after Justice Antonin Scalia\u2019s death, would make history:\u00a0Sri Srinivasan would be the first Hindu justice ever to serve on the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

On a judicial body whose members\u2019 faiths have often been discussed by observers trying to understand their rulings, Srinivasan\u00a0would bring a different experience.<\/p>\n

He\u00a0was sworn in on the Bhagavad Gita, a\u00a0Hindu holy book, when he started\u00a0his current job on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. \u201cHindus Laud Judge Srinivasan for Taking Oath on Gita,\u201d the Hindu American Foundation\u2019s news release read at the time.<\/p>\n

In what way\u00a0would a hypothetical Justice Srinivasan bring\u00a0Hindu tradition to bear when making decisions about religiously charged issues like abortion and gay rights? What do Hindus believe about contraception or the death penalty?<\/p>\n

Srinivasan did not respond to a request for comment about his own religious beliefs, and his prior judicial record gives few clues.<\/p>\n

Hinduism, the faith of less than 1 percent of the American public, includes many gods and a belief in reincarnation. While\u00a0it is distinctly different from the Protestant, Catholic and Jewish faiths of prior Supreme Court justices, several religious leaders and academic experts say\u00a0that the religion might be well-suited to the high court \u2014 because it is a highly pluralistic faith, with no dogmatic guidelines that every\u00a0Hindu community agrees on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no such thing as a Hindu belief about, say, abortion or stem cell research right now which would influence any particular case. Any Hindu who occupies a judicial position will interpret the law as it is, rather than through his or her religious viewpoint,\u201d said Vasudha Narayanan, an expert on Hinduism in America\u00a0who teaches\u00a0at the University of Florida. \u201cThere is no Hindu baggage, as such, at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes, Hindu holy texts offer judgments about topics like homosexual relationships and capital punishment.<\/p>\n

But there is no central figure, like the Catholic pope, who offers interpretation of\u00a0those texts for all Hindus. And across the vast spectrum of sects among the world\u2019s 1 billion Hindus, even the texts themselves vary.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere isn\u2019t a Hindu Bible. There are multiple texts, depending on the tradition,\u201d said Shana Sippy, a Carleton College instructor who wrote her dissertation on Hindus outside of India. \u201cThere isn\u2019t one text. There isn\u2019t one book that every single Hindu goes to. There isn\u2019t one story that every single Hindu knows.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a Pew poll,\u00a0only 12 percent of American Hindus\u00a0said that their scriptures should be taken literally, and 60 percent said scripture is not the word of God.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to generalize about Hindus, because\u00a0Hindus are as diverse or perhaps more diverse in their religious and political views than any other tradition that I\u2019m\u00a0aware of,\u201d said Raymond Williams, a religion professor at Wabash College.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say that the religion\u2019s 2,000-year-old texts don\u2019t address modern-day issues.\u00a0But for every scholar that says Hinduism condemns abortion or homosexuality, there are gurus who find the opposite in a different verse.\u00a0\u201cYou can find almost anything in the wide variety of Hindu text,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

Christian judges\u00a0in America\u00a0\u2014 including Scalia,\u00a0whose son praised the justice in his eulogy for bringing his deep Catholic faith to bear on his decisions\u00a0\u2014 have frequently discussed their beliefs.<\/p>\n

Narayanan\u00a0said that in India \u2014 where about 80 percent of the population is Hindu, and where a relative of hers served as a Supreme Court justice \u2014 Hindu precepts come up more rarely in debates about\u00a0secular law.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0very different from, say, appointing someone from one of the more Christian backgrounds, perhaps, in which people may have \u2013 may <\/em>have\u00a0\u2013 specific viewpoints,\u201d Narayanan said.<\/p>\n

Hindus in America \u2014 91 percent of whom are Asian, mostly of Indian descent, and 87 percent of whom are immigrants, according to a 2014\u00a0Pew research study \u2014 do have distinct political beliefs. They tend to be wealthier and more highly educated than most religious groups, and more than 60 percent lean Democrat while just 13 percent lean Republican. In the same poll, significant\u00a0majorities said they favored gay marriage and legal abortion.<\/p>\n

Vikkan Chopra, the president of the Hindu Temple of Metropolitan Washington, said that most members of his community in the D.C. area embrace Hindu holidays, food and other customs, but rarely see their faith as linked to their politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes, they are Hindus. They do maintain those cultures with their family, their Hindu friends. Otherwise, they\u2019re so Americanized,\u201d Chopra said.<\/p>\n

As for Srinivasan \u2014 it\u2019s impossible to say where he falls. And that might be just what Obama is looking for. With Republicans in the Senate vowing not to approve anybody,\u00a0Obama\u2019s strategy seems to be to pick a nominee with a moderate, unobjectionable record, whom the White House can pressure Republicans to say yes to.<\/p>\n

Srinivasan, like most of the others on the shortlist, has not staked out any positions on the hot-button issues the Supreme Court is likely to take up.<\/p>\n

When he was confirmed to the D.C. Circuit, he told the Senate Judiciary Committee,\u00a0\u201cI do not have an overarching, grand, unified judicial philosophy that I would bring with me to the bench if I were lucky enough to be confirmed.\u201d He said he had written only two published pieces in the past 20 years.<\/p>\n

The Senate approved Srinivasan\u2019s\u00a0appointment to the prominent D.C. appeals court in 2013 by a vote of 97\u00a0to\u00a00, so senators\u00a0may be hard-pressed to say why they would vote against him this time around.<\/p>\n

Srinivasan, who was born in India and immigrated to Kansas with his family as a child,\u00a0would be not only the first Hindu but also the first Asian American on the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all so excited about that possibility,\u201d Narayanan said. \u201cThat kind of recognition\u00a0kind of paints the Hindu Indian American into the fabric of the United States. It\u2019s really a whole different level of having arrived in the States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sippy compared a potential nomination for Srinivasan to the appointments of Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice, in 1916 and of Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice, in 1967.<\/p>\n

She envisioned the pride the Indian community in the United States might share if Srinivasan is nominated. \u201cIf\u00a0he becomes a Supreme Court\u00a0justice, there will be Indian American cultural celebrations where kids will dress up as him, just as they do as Indira Gandhi and famous scientists. He will become among those figures who are held up as what it means to be an immigrant.\u201d<\/p>\n

And while his religion might not influence his jurisprudence, she said, his judicial role would inspire fellow practitioners of his religion.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can be American \u2014 a\u00a0sense of seeing yourself in a position of power and prestige and respectability,\u201d she said. \u201cTo think about that is profound.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Source: What would a Hindu justice mean for the Supreme Court? \u2013 The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Obama has narrowed his list of potential Supreme Court nominees to about six names, our colleagues on The Post politics staff report. One jurist in the running, whose name has been floated for the Supreme Court starting almost immediately after Justice Antonin Scalia\u2019s death, would make history:\u00a0Sri Srinivasan would be the first Hindu justice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3085"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalpress-new.hinduismnow.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}