U.S. Supreme Court Justices Pose For Group Photo, September 29, 2009.
Gallery of Sonia Sotomayor
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor rings in the year year during The New Year's Eve 2014 Celebration in Times Square on December 31, 2013 in New York City.
Gallery of Sonia Sotomayor
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaks at the Jefferson Awards Foundation 43rd Annual National Ceremony on June 18, 2015 in Washington, District of Columbia.
Gallery of Sonia Sotomayor
U.S. President Donald Trump greets Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer and Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor on February 28, 2017 in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, District of Columbia.
Gallery of Sonia Sotomayor
Justice Sonia Sotomayor attends The 2018 DVF Awards at United Nations on April 13, 2018 in New York City.
Gallery of Sonia Sotomayor
Achievements
President Barack Obama meets with Judge Sonia Sotomayor and Vice President Joe Biden prior to an announcement in the East Room, May 26, 2009.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor rings in the year year during The New Year's Eve 2014 Celebration in Times Square on December 31, 2013 in New York City.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaks at the Jefferson Awards Foundation 43rd Annual National Ceremony on June 18, 2015 in Washington, District of Columbia.
U.S. President Donald Trump greets Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer and Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor on February 28, 2017 in the House chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, District of Columbia.
(traordinary determination and the power of believing in o...)
traordinary determination and the power of believing in oneself. Here is the story of a precarious childhood, with an alcoholic father (who would die when she was nine) and a devoted but overburdened mother, and of the refuge a little girl took from the turmoil at home with her passionately spirited paternal grandmother. But it was when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes that the precocious Sonia recognized she must ultimately depend on herself.
Sonia Sotomayor is an American lawyer and judge. She is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, appointed by President Barack Obama in May 2009 and confirmed in August 2009.
Background
Ethnicity:
Mrs. Sotomayor is the daughter of Puerto Rican-born parents.
Mrs. Sotomayor was born in Bronx, New York, United States, on June 25, 1954. Federal judge Sonia Sotomayor was born as the elder of two children to Juan and Celina Baez Sotomayor who moved from Puerto Rico to New York City to raise their children. Sotomayor's family functioned on a very modest income; her mother was a nurse at a methadone clinic, and her father was a tool-and-die worker.
Education
Sonia Sotomayor's first leanings toward the justice system began after watching an episode of the television show Perry Mason. When a prosecutor on the program said he did not mind losing when a defendant turned out to be innocent, Sotomayor later said to The New York Times that she "made the quantum leap: If that was the prosecutor's job, then the guy who made the decision to dismiss the case was the judge. That was what I was going to be."
Mrs. Sotomayor graduated from Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx in 1972 and entered the Ivy League, attending Princeton University. The young Latina woman felt overwhelmed by her new school; after she received low marks on first mid-term paper, she sought help, taking more English and writing classes. She also became highly involved with the Puerto Rican groups on campus, including Acción Puertorriqueña and the Third World Center. The groups, she said, provided her "with an anchor I needed to ground myself in that new and different world." She also worked with the university's discipline committee, where she started developing her legal skills.
All of Sotomayor's hard work paid off when she graduated summa cum laude from Princeton in 1976. She was also awarded the Pyne Prize, which is the highest academic award given to Princeton undergraduates. That same year, Sonia Sotomayor entered Yale Law School, where she was an editor for the Yale Law Journal. She received her Juris Doctor in 1979, passed the bar in 1980 and immediately began work as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, serving as a trial lawyer under District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. Sotomayor was responsible for prosecuting robbery, assault, murder, police brutality and child pornography cases.
Mrs. Sotomayor has received honorary law degrees from Princeton University (2001), Brooklyn Law School (2001), Hofstra University (2006), Northeastern University School of Law (2007), St. Lawrence University (2010), Yale University (2013), and the University of Puerto Rico (2014), etc.
In 1984, Mrs. Sotomayor entered private practice, making partner at the commercial litigation firm Pavia and Harcourt, where she specialized in intellectual property litigation. She moved from associate to partner at the firm in 1988. While she climbed the ladder there, Sotomayor also served on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the New York City Campaign Finance Board and the State of New York Mortgage Agency.
Sonia Sotomayor's pro bono work at these agencies caught the attention of Senators Ted Kennedy and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who were partially responsible for her appointment as U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of New York City. President George H.W. Bush nominated her for the position in 1992, which was confirmed unanimously by the Senate on August 11, 1992. When she joined the court, she was its youngest judge. On her 43rd birthday, June 25, 1997, she was nominated for the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals by President Bill Clinton. She was confirmed by the Senate that October.
In addition to her work in the Court of Appeals, Sotomayor also began teaching law as an adjunct professor at New York University in 1998 and at Columbia Law School in 1999. She has also received honorary law degrees from Herbert H. Lehman College, Princeton University and Brooklyn Law School. And she served on the Board of Trustees at Princeton.
On May 26, 2009, President Barack Obama announced his nomination of Mrs. Sotomayor for Supreme Court justice. The nomination was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in August 2009 by a vote of 68 to 31, making Sotomayor the first Latina Supreme Court justice in U.S. history.
In June 2015, Sonia Sotomayor was among the majority in two landmark Supreme Court rulings: On June 25, she was one of the six justices to uphold a critical component of the 2010 Affordable Care Act - often referred to as Obamacare - in King v. Burwell. The decision allows the federal government to continue providing subsidies to Americans who purchase health care through "exchanges," regardless of whether they are state or federally operated. Sotomayor is credited as a key force in the ruling, having presented cautionary arguments against the potential dismantling of the law. The majority ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, thus further cemented the Affordable Care Act. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia were in dissent, with Scalia presenting a scathing dissenting opinion to the Court.
On June 26, the Supreme Court handed down its second historic decision in as many days, with a 5-4 majority ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states. Sonia Sotomayor joined Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan in the majority, with Roberts, Alito, Scalia and Thomas dissenting.
In June 2016, Sotomayor made headlines when she wrote a scathing dissent for Utah v. Edward Joseph Strieff, Jr., a case involving civil liberties in regards to preventing unlawful search and seizures protected by the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. The court ruled in its 5-3 decision "that evidence found by police officers after illegal stops may be used in court if the officers conducted their searches after learning that the defendants had outstanding arrest warrants," according to the New York Times. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, which is considered a major victory for the police.
The Court insisted in its opinion that this incident was isolated, but Mrs. Sotomayor emphatically challenged this assertion and said this decision not only chisels away at protections under the Fourth Amendment, but also will affect minorities and low-income individuals disproportionately.
In April 2018, Justice Sotomayor suffered a shoulder injury from an accidental fall. Regardless, she was present for all major arguments that came before the court for the duration of the month, including Trump v. Hawaii, the administration's controversial travel-ban case. Sonia Sotomayor underwent surgery on May 1, and was expected to attend physical therapy for several months afterward.
(traordinary determination and the power of believing in o...)
2014
Politics
Sotomayor has supported the informal liberal bloc of justices when they divide along the commonly perceived ideological lines. During her tenure on the Supreme Court, Sotomayor has been identified with concern for the rights of defendants, calls for reform of the criminal justice system, and making impassioned dissents on issues of race, gender and ethnic identity.
Views
Quotations:
"Until we get equality in education, we won't have an equal society."
"Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."
"I strive never to forget the real world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses and government."
"Don't let fear stop you. Don't give up because you are paralyzed by insecurity or overwhelmed by the odds, because in giving up, you give up hope. Understand that failure is a process in life, that only in trying can you enrich yourself and have the possibility of moving forward. The greatest obstacle in life is fear and giving up because of it."
"Success is its own reward, but failure is a great teacher too, and not to be feared."
"As you discover what strength you can draw from your community in this world from which it stands apart, look outward as well as inward. Build bridges instead of walls."
"Remember that no one succeeds alone. Never walk alone in your future paths."
"I do know one thing about me: I don't measure myself by others' expectations or let others define my worth."
"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."
"When a young person, even a gifted one, grows up without proximate living examples of what she may aspire to become - whether lawyer, scientist, artist, or leader in any realm - her goal remains abstract. Such models as appear in books or on the news, however inspiring or revered, are ultimately too remote to be real, let alone influential. But a role model in the flesh provides more than inspiration; his or her very existence is confirmation of possibilities one may have every reason to doubt, saying, 'Yes, someone like me can do this."
"Experience has taught me that you cannot value dreams according to the odds of their coming true. Their real value is in stirring within us the will to aspire."
"Through reading, I escaped the bad parts of my life in the South Bronx. And, through books, I got to travel the world and the universe. It, to me, was a passport out of my childhood and it remains a way - through the power of words - to change the world."
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race, and to apply the Constitution with eyes open to the unfortunate effects of centuries of racial discrimination."
"The Latina in me is an ember that blazes forever."
Membership
Sonia Sotomayor was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2002.
American Philosophical Society
,
United States
2002
Personality
Sonia Sotomayor is known to be a woman of discipline.
Interests
shopping, traveling, giving gifts
Connections
On August 14, 1976 Mrs. Sotomayor married Kevin Edward Noonan, whom she had dated since high school, in a small chapel at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. However, Sotomayor and Noonan divorced amicably in 1983; they did not have children.