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Sonia Maria Sotomayor
Sotomayor in 2009
Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit
Incumbent
Assumed office
October 7, 1998
Nominated byBill Clinton
Preceded byJ. Daniel Mahoney
Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
In office
August 12, 1992 – October 7, 1998
Nominated byGeorge H.W. Bush
Preceded byJohn M. Walker, Jr.
Succeeded byVictor Marrero
Personal details
Born (1954-06-25) June 25, 1954 (age 70)
The Bronx, New York
NationalityUnited States
Alma materPrinceton University (A.B.)
Yale Law School (J.D.)

Sonia Maria Sotomayor (Audio file "Sonia_sotomayor.ogg" not found /ˈsoʊnjɑː soʊtoʊmɑˈjɔr/) (born June 25, 1954) is a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. On May 26, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Judge Sotomayor for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice David Souter. If confirmed, she would be the court's first Hispanic justice and third female justice.

Sotomayor is of Puerto Rican descent, and was born in the Bronx. Her father died when she was nine, and she was raised by her mother. Sotomayor graduated with an A.B., summa cum laude, from Princeton University in 1976, and received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was an editor at the Yale Law Journal. She was an activist for increased Latino representation at both schools. She worked as an Assistant District Attorney in New York for five years before entering private practice in 1984. Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush in 1991 and confirmed in 1992.

Sotomayor has ruled on several high profile cases. In 1995, she issued the preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball which ended the 1994 baseball strike. Sotomayor made a ruling allowing The Wall Street Journal to publish Vince Foster's suicide note. In 1997, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. After being blocked for more than a year by Senate Republicans fearful she was on the fast track to the Supreme Court, she was confirmed in 1998. Sotomayor was an Adjunct Professor at New York University School of Law from 1998 to 2007 and has been a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School since 1999.

Early life

Sotomayor and her parents

Sonia Maria Sotomayor was born in the Bronx, a borough of New York City. Her father, Juan Sotomayor, had a third-grade education and did not speak English. He was from the Santurce area of San Juan. Her mother, Celina Báez (born 1927), was from the neighborhood of Santa Rosa in Lajas, a still mostly rural area on Puerto Rico's southwest coast. They left Puerto Rico, met, and married during World War II after Celina served in the Women's Army Corps. He worked as a tool-and-die worker and she as a telephone operator and then a practical nurse. Sonia's brother Juan Sotomayor, three years younger, is a doctor in Syracuse, New York.

Sotomayor was raised a Catholic and grew up among other Puerto Ricans who settled in the East Bronx; she self-identifies as a "Nuyorican". In 1957, the family moved to the Bronxdale Houses housing project in Soundview, which has at times been considered part of both the East Bronx and South Bronx. Her relative proximity led to her becoming a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees. In the late 1960s, the family moved to Co-op City in the Northeast Bronx.

Sotomayor in a cap and gown for her eighth grade graduation.

Sonia was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age eight, and began taking daily insulin injections. (Her diabetes is considered to be well-controlled, with her A1C levels consistently less than 6.5.) Her father died of a heart attack at age 42, when she was nine years old. After this, she became fluent in English. Sotomayor has said that was first inspired by the strong-willed Nancy Drew book character, and then after her diabetes diagnosis led doctors to suggest a different career from detective, was inspired to go into a legal career and become a judge by watching the Perry Mason television series. She reflected in 1998: "I was going to college and I was going to become an attorney, and I knew that when I was ten. Ten. That's no jest."

Celina Sotomayor put great stress on the value of education, and bought the Encyclopædia Britannica for her children, something unusual in the housing projects. Sotomayor has credited her mother as being her "life inspiration". For grammar school, Sotomayor attended the parochial Blessed Sacrament School in Soundview, where she was valedictorian and had a near-perfect attendance record. Sotomayor then commuted to the academically rigorous parochial Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, where she was on the forensics team and was elected to the student government. She graduated as valedictorian in 1972.

College and law school

When Sotomayor entered Princeton University on a full scholarship, there were few women students and fewer Latinos (about 20). She later described the experience as like "a visitor landing in an alien country." She was too intimidated to ask questions for her first year there, her writing and vocabulary skills were weak, and she was lacking knowledge in the classics. She put in long hours in the library and over summers, worked with a professor outside class, and gained skills, knowledge, and confidence. She became a moderate student activist and co-chair of the Acción Puertorriqueña organization, which looked for more opportunities for Puerto Rican students and served as a social and political hub for them. After a visit to university president William G. Bowen in her sophomore year did not produce results, the organization filed a formal letter of complaint with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, saying the school discriminated in its hiring and admission practices, and she wrote opinion pieces for The Daily Princetonian with the same theme. The university's recruiting efforts intensified. Sotomayor joined the board of Princeton's Third World Center. She also ran an after-school program for local children and volunteered with Latino patients in a Trenton psychiatric hospital.

A history major, Sotomayor wrote her senior thesis at Princeton on Luis Muñoz Marín, the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico, and on the territory's struggles for economic and political self-determination. The thesis won honorable mention for the Latin American Studies Thesis Prize. She won the Pyne Prize, the top award for undergraduates, which reflected both strong grades and extracurricular activities. She was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa. In 1976 she was awarded an A.B. from Princeton, graduating summa cum laude. Sotomayor has described her time at Princeton as a life-changing experience.

On August 14, 1976, just after graduating from Princeton, Sotomayor married Kevin Edward Noonan, whom she had dated since high school, in a small chapel at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. He became a biologist and a patent lawyer. (The two divorced in 1983; they did not have children.)

In the fall of 1976, Sotomayor entered Yale Law School, again on a scholarship and again to a place with very few Latinos. There she was known as a hard studier and became an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She was also managing editor of the student-run Yale Studies in World Public Order publication. Sotomayor published a law review note on the effect of possible Puerto Rican statehood on the island's mineral and ocean rights. She was a semi-finalist in the Barristers Union mock trial competition. She was co-chair of a group for Latin, Asian and Native American students, and in her advocacy pushed for hiring more Hispanics for the faculty of the law school. In her third year, she filed a formal complaint against an established Washington, D.C. law firm for suggesting during a recruiting dinner that she was only at Yale via affirmative action. A faculty-student tribunal ruled in her favor, the firm apologized, but Sotomayor refused to be interviewed by them further. In 1979 she was awarded a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Early legal career

On the recommendation of Yale professor and future judge José A. Cabranes, Sotomayor was hired out of law school as an Assistant District Attorney under New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau starting in 1979. Working in the trial division, she prosecuted everything from shoplifting and prostitution to robberies, assaults, murders, and police brutality. She felt the lower-level crimes were largely products of socioeconomic environment and poverty, but had a different attitude about serious felonies: "No matter how liberal I am, I’m still outraged by crimes of violence. Regardless of whether I can sympathize with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous." She was especially saddened by crimes committed by Hispanics against other Hispanics. In general, she showed a passion for bringing law and order to the streets of New York, and had a special zeal in pursuing child pornography cases, unusual for the time. She gained a reputation for preparedness and fairness. Morgenthau later described her as a "fearless and effective prosecutor."

In 1984, she entered private practice, joining the boutique commercial litigation firm of Pavia & Harcourt in Manhattan as an associate. There she specialized in intellectual property litigation, international law, and arbitration. She later said, "I wanted to complete myself as an attorney." Although she had no civil litigation experience, the firm recruited her heavily, and she learned quickly on the job. She was eager to try cases and argue in court, rather than be part of a larger law firm. Her clients were mostly international corporations doing business in the United States; much of her time was spent tracking down and suing counterfeiters of Fendi goods. In some cases she went on-site with the police to Harlem or Chinatown to have illegitimate merchandise seized, in the latter instance pursuing a fleeing culprit while riding on a motorcycle. At other times she dealt with dry legal issues such as grain export contract disputes. In 1988 she became a partner at the firm and the job was lucrative. She left in 1992 when she became a judge.

In addition to her law firm work, Sotomayor began build relations to major Democratic Party officials in New York. In 1987, Governor of New York Mario Cuomo appointed Sotomayor to the board of the State of New York Mortgage Agency. The agency helped low-income people get home mortgages and to provide insurance coverage for housing and AIDS hospices, and she was vocal in supporting the right to affordable housing and in being skeptical about the effects of gentrification. Sotomayor was appointed by Mayor Ed Koch in 1988 as one of the founding members of the New York City Campaign Finance Board, where she served for four years. There she took an active role in the board's implementation of a voluntary scheme wherein local candidates received public matching funds in exchange for limits on contributions and spending and agreeing to greater financial disclosure.

Sotomayor was a member of the Board of Directors of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1980 to 1992. There she was a top policy maker who actively worked with the organization's lawyers on issues such as New York City hiring practices, police brutality, the death penalty, and voting rights. The group achieved its most visible triumph when it successful blocked a city primary election on the grounds that New York City Council boundaries diminished the power of minority voters.

Sotomayor joined the National Council of La Raza. During this time she also served on the board of the Maternity Center Association, a Manhattan-based non-profit group which focused on improving the quality of maternity care.

Federal district judge

Nomination and confirmation

Sotomayor had wanted to become a judge since elementary school, and was being recommended for a spot by Democratic New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan had an arrangement with his fellow New York Senator, Republican Al D'Amato, whereby he would get to choose roughly one out of every four New York district court seats even though a Republican was in the White House. Moynihan also wanted to fulfill a public promise he had made to get a Hispanic judge appointed for New York. When Moynihan's staff recommended her to him, they said "Have we got a judge for you!" Moynihan became convinced she would become the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice. D'Amato became an enthusiastic backer of Sotomayor as well, who was seen as politically centrist at the time. Of the impending drop in salary from private practice, Sotomayor said: "I've never wanted to get adjusted to my income because I knew I wanted to go back to public service. And in comparison to what my mother earns and how I was raised, it's not modest at all."

Sotomayor was thus nominated on November 27, 1991, by President George H. W. Bush to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York vacated by John M. Walker, Jr. Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, led by a friendly Democratic majority, went smoothly for her in June 1992, with her pro bono activities winning praise from Senator Ted Kennedy and her getting unanimous approval from the committee. Then a Republican senator blocked her nomination for a while in retaliation for an unrelated block Democrats had put on another nominee. Some weeks later, the block was dropped and Sotomayor was confirmed by unanimous consent by the full United States Senate on August 11, 1992, and received her commission the next day.

Sotomayor became the youngest judge in the Southern District and the first Hispanic federal judge anywhere in New York State. She became the first Puerto Rican woman to serve as in a U.S. federal court. She was also one of only 7 women among the district's 58 judges. She moved from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn back to the Bronx in order to live within her district.

Judgeship

Sotomayor generally kept a low public profile as a district court judge. She showed a willingness to take anti-government positions in a number of cases, and during her first year in the seat, she received high ratings from liberal public-interest groups. Other sources and organizations regarded her as a centrist during this period.

As a trial judge, she garnered a reputation for being well-prepared in advance of a case and moving cases along a tight schedule. Lawyers before her court viewed her as plain-spoken, intelligent, demanding, and sometimes somewhat unforgiving; one said, "She does not have much patience for people trying to snow her. You can't do it."

Notable rulings

On March 30, 1995, Sotomayor issued the preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball, preventing it from unilaterally implementing a new collective bargaining agreement and using replacement players. Her ruling ended the 1994 baseball strike after 232 days, the day before the new season was scheduled to begin. The Second Circuit upheld Sotomayor's decision and denied the owners' request to stay the ruling. The decision raised her profile, won her the plaudits of baseball fans, and had a lasting effect upon the game.

In Dow Jones v. Department of Justice (1995), Sotomayor sided with the The Wall Street Journal in its efforts to obtain and publish a photocopy of the suicide note of former Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster. Sotomayor ruled that the public had "a substantial interest" in viewing the note and enjoined the U.S. Justice Department from blocking its release.

In New York Times Co. v. Tasini (1997), freelance journalists sued the New York Times Company for copyright infringement for the New York Times' inclusion in an electronic archival database (LexisNexis) the work of freelancers it had published. Sotomayor ruled that the publisher had the right to license the freelancer's work. This decision was reversed on appeal, and the Supreme Court upheld the reversal; two dissenters (John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer) took Sotomayor's position.

In Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group (also in 1997), Sotomayor ruled that a book of trivia from the television program Seinfeld infringed on the copyright of the show's producer and did not constitute legal fair use. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld Sotomayor's ruling.

Court of Appeals judge

Nomination and confirmation

On June 25, 1997, Sotomayor was nominated by President Bill Clinton to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which was vacated by J. Daniel Mahoney. Her nomination was initially expected to have smooth sailing. But some Republicans had become convinced that Sotomayor was being fast-tracked for a near-term Supreme Court nomination, despite there being no vacancy at the time nor any indication the Clinton administration was considering nominating her or any Hispanic, and tried to slow down her confirmation as a result. Radio commentator Rush Limbaugh weighed in that Sotomayor was an ultraliberal who was on a "rocket ship" to the highest court. During her September 1997 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sotormayor effectively parried strong questioning from some Republican members about mandatory sentencing, gay rights, and her level of respect for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. After a long wait, she was approved by the committee in March 1998, with only two dissensions. However, in June 1998, The Wall Street Journal editorial page denounced her as a left-wing judicial activist, and the Republican block continued. Ranking Democratic committee member Patrick Leahy called the length of the hold "disturbing", "petty", and "shameful", also noting that at that time, "Of the 10 judicial nominees whose nominations have been pending the longest before the Senate, eight are women and racial or ethnic minority candidates."

During 1998, several Hispanic organizations organized a petition drive in New York State, generating hundreds of signatures from New Yorkers to try to convince New York Republican Senator Al D'Amato to push the Senate leadership to bring Sotomayor's nomination to a vote. D'Amato, a backer of Sotormayor to begin with and additionally concerned about being up for re-election that year, helped move Republican leadership. Her nomination had been pending for over a year when Majority Leader Trent Lott scheduled the vote. With complete Democratic support, and support from 25 Republican senators including Judiciary chair Orrin Hatch, Sotomayor was confirmed on October 2, 1998 by a 67-29 vote. She received her commission on October 7. The confirmation experience left Sotomayor somewhat angry; she said shortly afterwards that during the hearings Republicans had assumed her political beliefs based on her being a Latina: "That series of questions, I think, were symbolic of a set of expectations that some people had I must be liberal. It is stereotyping, and stereotyping is perhaps the most insidious of all problems in our society today."

Judgeship

Sotomayor attended a 2004 exhibit on the Fourteenth Amendment, Thurgood Marshall, and Brown v. Board of Education with fellow circuit judges Robert A. Katzmann and Damon J. Keith.

Over her ten years on the circuit court, Sotomayor has heard appeals in more than 3,000 cases, and has written about 380 opinions where she was in the majority. The Supreme Court reviewed five of those, reversing three and affirming two – not high numbers for an appellate judge of that many years. Sotomayor's circuit court rulings have led to her being considered a political centrist by the American Bar Association Journal and other sources and organizations. Several lawyers, legal experts, and news organizations, however, identify her as someone who has liberal inclinations. In any case, the Second Circuit's caseload typically skews more towards business and securities law rather than hot-button social or constitutional issues. Sotomayor has tended to write narrowly-formed rulings that rely upon close application of the law rather than import general philosophical viewpoints. Sotomayor's influence in the federal judiciary, as measured by the number of citations of her rulings by other judges and in law review articles, has increased significantly during the length of her appellate judgeship and has been greater than that of some other prominent federal appeals court judges.

Sotomayor was a member of the Second Circuit Task Force on Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts. In October 2001, she presented the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture at UC Berkeley School of Law; entitled "A Latina Judge's Voice", it was published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal the following spring. In the speech, she discussed the characteristics of her Latina upbringing and culture and discussed the history of minorities and women ascending to the federal bench. She said the low number of minority women on the federal bench at that time was "shocking". She then discussed at length how her own experiences as a Latina might affect her decisions as a judge. In any case, her past background in activism has not necessarily influenced her rulings: a study of 50 racial discrimination cases brought before her panel showed that 45 of them were rejected, with Sotomayor never filing a dissent.

In the Court of Appeals seat, Sotormayor has gained a reputation for vigorous and blunt behavior towards lawyers appealing their cases, sometimes to the point of brusque and curt treatment or testy interruptions. She is known for extensive preparation for oral arguments and for running a "hot bench", where judges ask lawyers plenty of questions. The 2009 Almanac of the Federal Judiciary, which contains anonymous evaluations of judges by lawyers who appear before them, contained a wide range of reactions to Sotomayor. Comments also diverged among lawyers willing to be named. Attorney Sheema Chaudhry said, “She’s brilliant and she’s qualified, but I just feel that she can be very, how do you say, temperamental.” Defense lawyer Gerald B. Lefcourt said, “She used her questioning to make a point, as opposed to really looking for an answer to a question she did not understand.” In contrast, fellow circuit judge and former teacher Guido Calabresi said his tracking showed that Sotomayor's questioning patterns were no different from other members of the court and added, “Some lawyers just don’t like to be questioned by a woman. was sexist, plain and simple.”

In 2005, Senate Democrats suggested Sotomayor, among others, to President George W. Bush as a nominee acceptable to them to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

Abortion

In the 2002 decision Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush, Sotomayor upheld the Bush administration's implementation of the Mexico City Policy, which states that "the United States will no longer contribute to separate nongovernmental organizations which perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations." Sotomayor held that the policy did not constitute a violation of equal protection, as "the government is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds."

First Amendment rights

In Pappas v. Giuliani (2002), Sotomayor dissented from her colleagues’ ruling that the New York Police Department could terminate an employee from his desk job who sent racist materials through the mail. Sotomayor argued that the First Amendment protected speech by the employee “away from the office, on own time,” even if that speech was "offensive, hateful, and insulting," and that therefore the employee's First Amendment claim should have gone to trial rather than being dismissed on summary judgment.

In 2008, Sotomayor was on a three-judge panel in Doninger v. Niehoff that unanimously affirmed, in an opinion written by Second Circuit Judge Debra Livingston, the district court's judgment that Lewis S. Mills High School did not violate the First Amendment rights of a student when it barred her from running for student government after she called the superintendent and other school officials "douchebags" in a blog post written while off-campus that encouraged students to call an administrator and "piss her off more." Judge Livingston held that the district judge did not abuse her discretion in holding that the student's speech "foreseeably create a risk of substantial disruption within the school environment,”, which is the precedent in the Second Circuit for when schools may regulate off-campus speech. Although Sotomayor did not write this opinion, she has been criticized by some who disagree with it.

Second Amendment rights

Sotomayor was part of the three-judge Second Circuit panel that affirmed the district court's ruling in Maloney v. Cuomo (2009). Maloney was arrested for possession of nunchakus, which are illegal in New York; Maloney argued that this law violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms. The Second Circuit's per curiam opinion noted that the Supreme Court has not, so far, ever held that the Second Amendment is binding against state governments. On the contrary, in Presser v. Illinois, a Supreme Court case from 1886, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment "is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state." With respect to the Presser v. Illinois precedent, the panel stated that the recent Supreme Court case of District of Columbia v. Heller (which struck down the district's gun ban as unconstitutional) "does not invalidate this longstanding principle." Thus, the Second Circuit panel upheld the lower court's decision, thereby ruling that Maloney was not permitted to possess nunchakus in New York.

Fourth Amendment rights

In N.G. ex rel. S.G. v. Connecticut (2004), Sotomayor dissented from her colleagues’ decision to uphold a series of strip searches of “troubled adolescent girls” in juvenile detention centers. While Sotomayor agreed that some of the strip searches at issue in the case were lawful, she would have held that due to the “the severely intrusive nature of strip searches,” they should not be allowed “in the absence of individualized suspicion, of adolescents who have never been charged with a crime.” She argued that an "individualized suspicion" rule was more consistent with Second Circuit precedent than the majority's rule.

In Leventhal v. Knapek (2001), Sotomayor rejected a Fourth Amendment challenge by a U.S. Department of Transportation employee whose employer searched his office computer. She held that, “Even though had some expectation of privacy in the contents of his office computer, the investigatory searches by the DOT did not violate his Fourth Amendment rights” because here “there were reasonable grounds for suspecting” the search would reveal evidence of “work-related misconduct.”

Employment discrimination

Sotomayor was a member of a Second Circuit panel in the high-profile case Ricci v. DeStefano that upheld the right of the City of New Haven to throw out its test for firefighters and start over with a new test, because the City believed the test had a "disparate impact" on minority firefighters. (No black firefighters qualified for promotion under the test, whereas some had qualified under tests used in previous years.) The City was concerned that minority firefighters might sue under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The City chose not to certify the test results and a lower court had previously upheld the City's right to do this. Several white firefighters who had passed the test, including the lead plaintiff who has dyslexia and had put much extra effort into studying, sued the City of New Haven, claiming that their rights were violated because the test was thrown out. After an appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case April 2009, and a ruling has not yet been issued.

Antitrust

In Clarett v. National Football League (2004), Sotomayor upheld the National Football League's eligibility rules requiring players to wait three full seasons after high school graduation before entering the NFL draft. Maurice Clarett challenged these rules, which were part of the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and its players, on antitrust grounds. Sotomayor held that Clarett's claim would upset the established "federal labor law favoring and governing the collective bargaining process." She wrote: "We follow the Supreme Court's lead in declining to 'fashion an antitrust exemption additional advantages to professional football players ... that transport workers, coal miners, or meat packers would not enjoy.'"

Civil rights

In Correctional Services Corp. v. Malesko (2000), Sotomayor, writing for the court, supported the right of an individual to sue a private corporation working on behalf of the federal government for alleged violations of that individual's constitutional rights. Reversing a lower court decision, Sotomayor found that an existing Supreme Court doctrine, known as "Bivens" — which allows suits against individuals working for the federal government for constitutional rights violations — could be applied to the case of a former prisoner seeking to sue the private company operating the federal halfway house facility in which he resided. The Supreme Court reversed Sotomayor's ruling in a 5-4 decision, saying that the Bivens doctrine could not be expanded to cover private entities working on behalf of the federal government. Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer dissented, siding with Sotomayor's original ruling.

In 2004, Sotomayor was part of the judge panel that ruled in Granholm v. Heald that New York's law prohibiting out-of-state wineries from shipping directly to consumers in New York was constitutional even though in-state wineries were allowed to. The case was appealed and attached to another case. The case reached the Supreme Court later on as Swedenburg v. Kelly and was overruled in a 5-4 decision that found the law was discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Property rights

In Krimstock v. Kelly (2002), Sotomayor wrote an opinion halting New York City's practice of seizing the motor vehicles of drivers accused of driving while intoxicated and some other crimes and holding those vehicles for "months or even years" during criminal proceedings. Noting the importance of cars to many individuals' livelihoods or daily activities, she held that it violated individuals' due process rights to hold the vehicles without permitting the owners to challenge the City's continued possession of their property.

In Brody v. Village of Port Chester (2003), a takings case, Sotomayor wrote an opinion remanding the case to the district court for further proceedings on whether Brody had adequate notice of the Village's condemnation proceedings against his property. (A related proceeding in the lower court was called Didden v. Village of Port Chester. The case has drawn criticism from libertarian commentators.)

Other activities

Sotomayor with her nephews at Old Yankee Stadium

In 1997, Sotomayor described New York construction contractor Peter White as her fiancé, but the relationship ended a year or two later without their getting married.

Sotomayor was an Adjunct Professor at New York University School of Law from 1998 to 2007 and has been a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School since 1999. She became a member of the Board of Trustees of Princeton University in 2006.

Sotomayor does not belong to a Catholic parish or attend Mass, but does attend church for important occasions. She maintains ties with Puerto Rico, visiting once or twice a year, speaking there occasionally, and visiting cousins and other relatives who still there.

Nomination to the United States Supreme Court

Main article: Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination
Sotomayor met with President Obama at the White House on May 21, 2009, five days before the announcement of her nomination.

Since President Barack Obama's election there had been speculation that Sotomayor could be a leading candidate for a Supreme Court seat if one became available on the court during Obama's term. New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand wrote a joint letter to Obama urging him to appoint Sotomayor, or alternatively Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, to the Supreme Court if a vacancy should arise on the Court during his term. On April 30, 2009, Justice David Souter's retirement plans leaked to the media, and Sotomayor received early attention as a possible nominee for the seat to be vacated in June 2009. On May 13, 2009, the Associated Press reported that Obama was considering Sotomayor, among others, for possible appointment to the United States Supreme Court. On May 26, 2009, Obama nominated Sotomayor to the court. If confirmed, this would make her the Supreme Court's first Latina justice. She would also be the third woman to serve on the Court, following Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She would be the twelfth Roman Catholic, with her appointment giving the Roberts Court a record six concurrent Catholic justices.

Sotomayor's nomination won praise from Democrats and liberals; Senate Republican leaders said they would not filibuster her, and Democrats appeared to have sufficient votes to confirm her. The strongest criticism of her nomination came from conservatives and some Republican senators over the issue of judicial activism and a line from her 2001 Berkeley Law lecture: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." The rhetoric quickly became inflamed, with radio commentator Rush Limbaugh and former Republican leader Newt Gingrich calling Sotomayor a "racist" while Republican Senate leader John Cornyn denounced such attacks. Within a few days, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stated that Sotomayor's word choice in 2001 had been "poor".

Awards and honors

Sotomayor has received honorary law degrees from Lehman College (1999), Princeton University (2001), Brooklyn Law School (2001), Pace University School of Law (2003), and honorary degrees from Hofstra University, and Northeastern University.

She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2002. She was given the Outstanding Latino Professional Award in 2006 by the Latino/a Law Students Association.

Publications

See also

References

  1. ^ Paulson, Michael (May 26, 2009). "Sotomayor would be sixth Catholic justice". The Boston Globe. Retrieved May 26, 2009. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  2. See inogolo:pronunciation of Sonia Sotomayor.
  3. ^ "Princeton alumna Sonia Sotomayor nominated to the Supreme Court: Images". Princeton University. Retrieved May 29, 2009.
  4. ^ "Judge Sonia Sotomayor bio". WABC-TV. May 27, 2009. Retrieved May 27, 2009.
  5. ^ Coto, Danica (May 26, 2009). "Sotomayor maintains Puerto Rican roots". Associated Press. Retrieved May 26, 2009.
  6. ^ Hoffman, Jan (September 25, 1992). "A Breakthrough Judge: What She Always Wanted". The New York Times. {{cite news}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
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External links

{{subst:#if:Sotomayor, Sonia|}} [[Category:{{subst:#switch:{{subst:uc:1954}} 

|| UNKNOWN | MISSING = Year of birth missing {{subst:#switch:{{subst:uc:}}||LIVING=(living people)}}
| #default = 1954 births

}}]] {{subst:#switch:{{subst:uc:}} 

|| LIVING  = 
| MISSING  = 
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