These recollections are recounted for the single purpose of illustrating that we are all products of our life experiences. The empathy I feel for motherless children is boundless. My understanding of the world having grown up a minority in an all-male household, feeling outside the mainstream of whole families, is different than those who had both a mother and a father.
And though I never requested nor wanted special consideration, my sense of the world as I navigated the testosterone-rich environment of America's old newsrooms as one of relatively few women is not the same as that of my male counterparts.
If I were a judge, I would bring to the bench all those experiences and the accumulated wisdom derived from them. I do not think that would make me a less-fair or less-objective jurist than the men on either side of me. I am certain, however, that my intellectual makeup does not exist independently of the emotions that helped form me.
