To family and friends, she's Sonia from the block, but the girl who grew up in south Bronx reading Nancy Drew novels is about to become the first Hispanic judge to sit on the US Supreme Court, writes DENIS STAUNTON
INTRODUCING Sonia Sotomayor at the White House this week, President Barack Obama ran through the qualities he was seeking in a supreme court justice. They included a rigorous intellect, mastery of the law and an understanding that a judge’s job is to interpret, not make, the law.
These qualities were not enough, however, because the best justices brought something else to the court: experience.
“Experience being tested by obstacles and barriers, by hardship and misfortune; experience insisting, persisting, and ultimately overcoming those barriers,” the president said. “It is experience that can give a person a common touch and a sense of compassion; an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live. And that is why it is a necessary ingredient in the kind of justice we need on the supreme court.”
The daughter of poor Puerto Rican immigrants, Sotomayor grew up in a public housing project in New York’s south Bronx, sometimes dodging drug dealers on the stairwells on her way home from school. A graduate of Princeton and Yale Law School, she worked as a public prosecutor and a commercial lawyer before becoming a judge.
If she is confirmed by the senate, Sotomayor will be the third woman and the first Hispanic to become a supreme court justice – a fact Obama trumpeted at the White House this week.
“Well, Sonia, what you’ve shown in your life is that it doesn’t matter where you come from, what you look like, or what challenges life throws your way – no dream is beyond reach in the United States of America,” he said.
Democrats welcomed the choice of Sotomayor as a smart political move that will help the party to consolidate its grip on the rapidly expanding Hispanic vote. Obama was always likely to choose a second woman to join Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court, but party strategists saw his selection of Sotomayor as offering twice the political dividend.
THE NINE SUPREME court justices have lifetime tenure and, at 54, Sotomayor could still be on the court more than 30 years from now. Conservatives and liberals alike view supreme court appointments as among the most important choices a president can make because the justices remain on the bench long after the president is gone.
Republican leaders in the senate have reacted with caution to Sotomayor’s nomination, not least because they view Hispanics as a swing constituency likely to determine the outcome of national elections for years to come.
Conservative commentators have been less restrained, denouncing Sotomayor as a liberal activist, an ideologue and even a racist. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh was the first to accuse the judge of racism, citing remarks she made in 2001 during a speech entitled “A Latina Judge’s Voice” at the University of California at Berkeley.
“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,” she had said.
Former house speaker Newt Gingrich, who hopes for a political comeback as a presidential candidate in 2012, quickly stepped in behind Limbaugh.
“Imagine a judicial nominee said ‘my experience as a white male makes me better than a Latino woman’? Wouldn’t they have to withdraw?” he asked. “New racism is no better than old racism.”
Sonia Sotomayor was born on 25 June, 1954, the daughter of immigrants who had come to the US from Puerto Rico during the second World War. Her father, a factory worker who never learned English, died when she was nine, leaving her mother to raise two children alone in the South Bronx.
Celina Sotomayor, who is now 82 and was at the White House for this week’s announcement, worked six days a week, first as a telephone operator and later as a nurse.
“She struggled to put my brother and me through school,” Sotomayor recalled in a commencement address at Lehman College in the Bronx in 1999.
“For my mother, education has always been the top priority in all our lives. It was because of her that we were the only kids I knew in the housing projects to have an Encyclopedia Britannica.” Reading Nancy Drew stories as a child, Sotomayor decided she wanted to be a detective but, at eight years old, she was diagnosed with diabetes and told that detective work was out of the question.
“I became very disappointed about not having a life plan,” she told the New York Daily News in 1998. “At the time, Perry Mason had become a very popular show, and I loved Perry Mason. If I couldn’t do detective work as a police officer, I could do it as a lawyer.”
SOTOMAYOR ATTENDED Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx and won a scholarship to Princeton, where she was one of a handful of Black and Hispanic students. Too shy to ask a question in class during her first year, she worked long hours in the library, got involved in student politics and graduated at the top of her class.
At college, Sotomayor married Kevin Noonan, a childhood sweetheart; they divorced seven years later and had no children.
After Yale Law School, where she was among the editors of the Law Journal, she was recruited as a prosecutor by Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau.
In her early years as a prosecutor, Sotomayor confessed to having misgivings about prosecuting low-grade crimes such as shoplifting and prostitution.
“In large measure, in those cases you were dealing with socioeconomic crimes, crimes that could be the product of the environment and of poverty,” she told the New York Times at the time. “Once I started doing felonies, it became less hard. No matter how liberal I am, I’m still outraged by crimes of violence. Regardless of whether I can sympathise with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous.”
Sotomayor left the district attorney’s office in 1984 to work in a private law firm but, seven years later, George HW Bush nominated her to be a federal district judge in the Southern District of New York. In 1997, Bill Clinton nominated her to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.
Lawyers who have appeared before Sotomayor give her mixed reviews, with some expressing admiration for her straight talk and mastery of the details of each case, but others complaining that she can be rude or abrupt in questioning attorneys.
Although she is widely viewed as a liberal judge, Sotomayor has issued no major decisions on abortion, the death penalty, gay rights or national security – traditionally the hottest buttons for conservatives. Indeed, in her only decision concerning abortion, she upheld the Bush administration’s right to withhold development funds from groups overseas that advise women about abortion.
THE TOUGHEST questions Sotomayor will face during the confirmation process are likely to focus on race, identity politics and affirmative action. The White House insists that her remarks at Berkeley about the relative merits of Latina and white male judges were taken out of context. In fact, the speech argues that the experience of being a woman or a member of an ethnic minority affects a judge’s decisions.
“The aspiration to impartiality is just that – it’s an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others,” she said. “Not all women or people of colour, in all or some circumstances or indeed in any particular case or circumstance, but enough people of colour in enough cases will make a difference in the process of judging.”
More controversial than the Berkeley speech is Sotomayor’s role in rejecting an appeal by a group of firefighters from New Haven, Connecticut who say they were unfairly denied promotion because they were white. The firefighters sued because the city threw out the results of a test for promotions after few minority firefighters scored well on it. Sotomayor was part of the panel of judges that rejected the firefighters’ appeal and the Supreme Court is now reviewing that result.
Senate arithmetic suggests that, unless a shocking personal scandal emerges in the coming weeks, Sotomayor will be confirmed as the next supreme court justice. At the White House this week, she promised to apply the principles of America’s Founding Fathers to today’s questions, adding that her personal experience would help her to do so.
“It has helped me to understand, respect, and respond to the concerns and arguments of all litigants who appear before me, as well as to the views of my colleagues on the bench. I strive never to forget the real-world consequences of my decisions on individuals, businesses, and government,” she said. “I hope that as the Senate and the American people learn more about me they will see that I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.”
Who is she? US federal appeals court judge, raised in a tough housing project in the south Bronx, educated at Princeton and Yale.
Why is she in the news? Nominated by Barack Obama as the next supreme court justice.
Most appealing characteristic: Unassuming and still in touch with her roots.
Least appealing characteristic: Wounds thin-skinned lawyers with brusque questions.
Most likely to say: “I’m sorry, Senator, but I cannot comment on an issue likely to come before the Court.”
Least likely to say: “This is really more of a man’s job.”