Obama's choice for Supreme Court is forthcoming. This sounds like someone who might make a good judge or public servant generally ...
Viola Canales ’79, J.D. ’89, grew up in a close-knit, highly religious community in the south Texas border town of McAllen, when it was at least 80 percent Mexican American. ...
At 48, Canales has held many jobs: U.S. Army captain, litigator, federal business administrator, and recruiter for women and minority CEOs. But it is in writing fiction, which she now does full time, that she feels most empowered to improve young lives. ...
The intense faith and mysticism that surrounded Canales as a child turns up in [her writing] ...
Canales says her father was thrilled when she went to Harvard because John F. Kennedy had gone there; it was the only thing he knew about the university. Yet she was restless as an undergraduate and left twice in search of “adventures.” (During one summer she worked as an organizer with the United Farm Workers union.) The second time she left Harvard was to complete officers’ training at Fort Benning; she was later stationed on the border of what was then West Germany and also worked on the Hawk and Patriot missile systems. Returning to Harvard, she concentrated in government and graduated in 1986. Her next step, the law degree, would help her improve “equality and opportunity for everybody, whatever their culture or race or gender,” she explains. “I feel peoples’ lives are about evolving and finding their don—a supernatural gift that everybody has that’s used for the good of a whole community—and being given a chance to give their gift.”
After graduation, she joined O’Melveny & Myers in Los Angeles, where she worked for the commission that investigated the Los Angeles police department after the beating of Rodney King. In 1994 the Clinton administration appointed her a regional administrator for the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA); she helped guarantee $3 billion in loans annually in California, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii, and Guam. ...
[Talking about her book] To change an outlook, you have to be shown something that is positive, that is beautiful,” she says. “We all need a better world right now. America is stuck; it has lost its magic in life and people live life as work. I think we only start dreaming again with myth and spirituality in our lives. Only then can we conjure up a better society.”
She actually has an important connection to another candidate, who perhaps might be a good replacement to Justice Stevens. After all, Alito is more conservative than O'Connor. Either way, said connection would probably make an excellent justice and could bond with John Roberts given she also was a repeat advocate in front of the Court.
Oh, and there is a pretty good chance neither will be nominated this week. Judge Wood is the favorite. Given the reality of the situation, that will do.