Sonia Sotomayor: Justice at Last?

Here is a bit more information on how Sonia Sotomayor relates to her roots...
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Obama's Supreme Court pick Sonia Sotomayor never forgot her Bronx roots
BY Michael Saul
DAILY NEWS POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

Updated Tuesday, May 26th 2009, 3:32 PM

Sonia Sotomayor - who rose from the broken-glass streets of a city housing project to become the Supreme Court's first Latina nominee - says she's just a "kid from the Bronx."

"It is a daunting feeling to be here," Sotomayor, 54, said minutes after President Obama nominated her to replace Associate Justice David Souter.

The daughter of the Bronx recalled getting a tour of the White House after she was named an appeals court judge 11 years ago.

"It was an overwhelming experience for a kid from the South Bronx. Yet never in my wildest childhood imaginings did I ever envision that moment, let alone ... this moment," she said.

"I hope that as the Senate and American people learn more about me, they will see that I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences."

If confirmed by the Senate, she will be the first Hispanic justice on the nation's highest court.

In selecting Sotomayor, Obama said he chose the judge not only because of her "brilliant" legal career, but her "wisdom accumulated from an inspiring life's journey."

"She's faced down barriers, overcome the odds, lived out the American Dream that brought her parents here [from Puerto Rico] so long ago," Obama said. "She has never forgotten where she began."

Sotomayor's factory-worker father died when she was 9. Her mother, Celina, supported Sotomayor and her brother, now a doctor, by working at methadone clinics.

Dreaming big even as a child

As a child, Sotomayor became enamored with Nancy Drew stories and wanted to be an investigative detective like the female heroine of those popular childhood mystery books.

At age 8, she was diagnosed with diabetes and was told detective work wasn't in the cards.

"I became very disappointed about not having a life plan," she told the 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."

As she chased that dream, the self-described "Newyorkrican" inhaled both the culture her parents lived and her new experiences in America.

"Being a Latina child was watching the adults playing dominoes on Saturday night and us kids playing loteria, bingo, with my grandmother calling out the numbers, which we marked on our cards with chickpeas."

She said her heritage helped shaped her taste in food.

"My Latina identity also includes, because of my particularly adventurous taste buds, morcilla - pig intestines - patitas de cerdo con garbanzo - pigs' feet with beans - and la lengua y orejas de cuchifrito - pigs' tongue and ears."

Sotomayor attended Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, where former students described her as superbright.

Jeri Faulkner, who attended Cardinal Spellman with Sotomayor and is the school's dean of students, said Sotomayor was "very smart" and a "role model."

"She is the American Dream - no matter where you came from or who you are, you can achieve and she's done it," she said.

Another Spellman alumna, Anna Lehewych, said students in Sotomayor's 1972 graduating class have been calling one another and posting "Hooray for Sonia" messages on Facebook pages.

"We're thrilled; everybody is thrilled," she said. "She's smart and diplomatic and we're all very proud of her," said Lehewych, 54, a Holbrook, L.I., school secretary. "She's done the Bronx proud."

Lehewych recalls that everyone knew Sotomayor and "she was well-liked ... you can't speak too highly of her." But Sotomayor had at least one defeat at Spellman. "She ran for president of the Student Council, "but another girl beat her," Lehewych said.

Sotomayor met her future husband, Kevin Noonan, at Spellman. They were high school sweethearts who married at 22 at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

The couple divorced in 1983. They never had children and she never remarried.

"I think it's great," said Noonan, a Chicago lawyer and molecular biologist, referring to his ex-wife's nomination. "She'll be a great judge."

Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude in 1976 from Princeton University, an experience she described as the "single most growing event of my life." She earned her law degree at Yale, where she was editor of the law journal.

Tony Kronman, former dean of the Yale Law School and one of Sotomayor's professors, described her as "very personable, intelligent, outgoing, extremely warm and very tough.

"She impressed me as an unusually brainy student even in this brainy group - and as someone who, by virtue of intelligence and drive, was destined for great things," Kronman said.

After leaving Yale, Sotomayor worked as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan under the legendary Robert Morgenthau.

In 1991, Sen. Daniel Moynihan (D-N.Y.) recommended Sotomayor to President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, who made good on a promise to appoint a Hispanic judge in New York.

At 40, Sotomayor became the youngest Manhattan federal judge and the first of Puerto Rican descent. In 1998, President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, elevated her to the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

'Breaking the mold for years'

Jenny Rivera, a Sotomayor clerk in the 1990s, said she remembers Sotomayor telling her she often felt like the only Latina lawyer in the room.

"She has been breaking the mold for years," Rivera said.

Sotomayor dines several times a week at the Blue Ribbon Bakery at Bedford St., which is near her apartment. She almost always orders the same thing: smoked sturgeon on toast, three breadsticks and decaffeinated coffee.

Milcar Cruz, 24, a worker at the bakery from Ecuador who recently became a U.S. citizen, said Sotomayor always greets him in Spanish.

"I hope she's going to help all the people in the Latino community," he said.

msaul@nydailynews.com

With Richard Schapiro and Tanyanika Samuels

Re: # 3

Yaar Masadi miaN, don't be too hard on the Judge's abilities to excel. That is a good characteristic to pick people for! It beats nepotism and the like which is so prevalent back in the subcontinent. :)

BTW, I am sure that both Howard University and Guadalahere University have had their share of exceptional graduates. I am also sure that Princeton would have had a few rotten apples, too.

bjk writes "Because of the above (and subsequent) events, she is fully able to empathize with the obstacles people can face because of their minority and financially disadvantaged statuses in life"

She cannot and here is why, she was picked as the exception and not the rule in order to prove true the BS Horatio Alger equal opportunity BS that exists in a elite rigged system of America. Today why she is even being considered for the position is not because of the background factor but because she socialized through the elite institutions. Show me one judge there who graduated from Howard or Guadalahare university. The fact is that these elite institutions that are there to prep the "leaders" do so to maintain a system that harms the many and benefits the few. Get an education and you should be worried about bigger things in India, its poverty and the state of our people rather than this BS distraction going on in the halls of US injustice (par excellence)- just look at the demographic picture of the goddamned jails
TNITC masadi

Re: # 1

Masadi sahib, welcome “back”!

You are mistaken about Judge Sotomayor’s roots. Those roots are humble.

(1) Sotomayor is Puerto Rican in origin and has had the “minority experience”.

(2) She was born in the Bronx – a place not famous for the rich and famous – rather having a very working-class sort of reputation.

(3) She lived in a racially/ethnically mixed neighborhood – a housing project.

(4) Her father died when she was nine, and she was subsequently raised by her mother. Single mothers are rarely rolling in wealth.

(5) She was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the age of eight and has been taking daily insulin injections ever since. So she knows what setbacks are.

(6) She is hardly from an “elite” family. Her father had had only a third-grade education and did not speak English. Her father was a tool-and-die worker and her mother worked first as a telephone operator and then a practical nurse.

On the positive side, she had a mom who really valued education and she had a strong support structure through the extended family.

She entered Princeton on a full scholarship. Initially she felt like a total outsider (because of the low number of minorities) but overcame it and pushed for better representation of minorities in campus and school-related activities.

Because of the above (and subsequent) events, she is fully able to empathize with the obstacles people can face because of their minority and financially disadvantaged statuses in life.

B Singh writes "Judge Sotomayor is a well regarded judge. Her qualifications are second to none. She was educated at Princeton and Yale."

Which makes her totally unqualified to dispense justice to the common folk or know what their lives are about, she is a product of elite establishments and that is why her choice like the choice of Obama as president is for elite manipulation using symbols that in the persona of those chosen mean nothing. Get an education


TNITC masadi

P.S To the utter dismay of the peons of the West I am back and ready to give them and their dimwitted ideas hell....