The question we were there to take up was, “What kind of Supreme Court justices do we want?” The topic was set before the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor, but of course the upcoming hearings of the Judicial Committee were on everyone’s mind. And so there was a lot of talk about empathy against the background of President Obama’s praise of it and Judge Sotomayor’s now famous or infamous speculation that a wise Latina might know something an old white guy did not.