Background
July 2009
Sonia Sotomayor was born in New York in 1954, to working-class parents of Puerto Rican origin. Notably, the family spent time in public housing projects in the Bronx, and, after her father died, her mother worked to support Judge Sotomayor and her brother. Judge Sotomayor attended Princeton University on scholarships, graduating second in her class, Phi Beta Kappa, and summa cum laude in 1976. She then attended Yale Law School, where she served as an editor on the Yale Law Journal, managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order, and graduated in 1979. After receiving her J.D., Judge Sotomayor worked for Robert Morgenthau at the New York County District Attorney's Office, where she prosecuted criminal cases in state court for five years. Following her stint as a prosecutor, she joined the firm of Pavia & Harcourt as an associate. She worked primarily on complex commercial civil litigation, and became a partner in the firm in 1988. She was nominated to the U.S. District Court in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush, and was elevated to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals by President Clinton in 1998 (confirmed by a vote of 67-29). At various points in her career, Judge Sotomayor has also taught at NYU and Columbia Law Schools.
Judge Sotomayor has contributed a significant amount of time to public service and community service during her career. She has served on the Board of Directors of numerous organizations, including the New York City Campaign Finance Board, the State of New York Mortgage Agency, the Maternity Center Association,[1] and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, now called Latino Justice PRLDEF (PRLDEF). She has also been, at various times, a member of the National Association of Women Judges, the American Bar Association, the Belizean Grove,[2] the National Council of La Raza, the Second Circuit Task Force on Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts, and the selection committee for several public interest legal fellowship programs. She has received many awards and commendations during her career, including the Arabella Babb Mansfield award from the National Association of Women Lawyers, the Latina of the Year Judiciary Award of the Hispanic National Bar Association, and the Gertrude E. Rush award from the National Bar Association. She has received numerous awards from Hispanic legal groups, organizations, and student associations, and has spoken before such groups many times.
Judge Sotomayor is well-respected in the profession and has an excellent reputation as a careful, thoughtful, fair, and extremely intelligent jurist. The ABA Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary unanimously rated her well-qualified for the Supreme Court.[3] She has also received the support of the National Association of Women Lawyers, the Hispanic Bar Association, and the New York City Bar Association.[4] Although some have raised questions about her demeanor on the bench, her colleague on the Second Circuit, Judge Guido Calabresi, said that he kept track of the kinds of questions that Judge Sotomayor asked on the bench and compared them to those of her colleagues. "And I must say I found no difference at all. So I concluded that all that was going on was that there were some male lawyers who couldn't stand being questioned toughly by a woman," Calabresi said in an interview. "It was sexism in its most obvious form."[5]
One topic that has drawn much public attention and commentary is the impact that Judge Sotomayor's ethnicity and gender may have upon her work as a judge. Judge Sotomayor has stated in a number of speeches that her background as a Latina is a significant part of her identity. She has discussed her status as a Latina judge as part of the debate about whether judges should transcend their personal experiences and viewpoints in their decision-making, or whether a judge's background inevitably influences his or her decisions (or as Judge Sotomayor put it, that "[p]ersonal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.").[6] Judge Sotomayor stated, most famously in a 2001 speech, that "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,"[7] and this statement has generated much criticism.
It should be noted that Judge Sotomayor concluded in the speech that:
I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.
Judge Sotomayor was asked about this issue and these statements repeatedly during the hearing, and she replied consistently that she believes strongly that the even-handed application of the law must always prevail. For example, she stated in response to Senator Sessions:
I believe my record of 17 years demonstrates fully that I do believe that law - that judges must apply the law and not make the law. Whether I've agreed with a party or not, found them sympathetic or not, in every case I have decided, I have done what the law requires. [8]
And in response to Senator Grassley she said:
No, I do not believe that judges should use their personal feelings, beliefs or value systems * * * to influence their outcomes. Neither do I believe that they should consider the gender, race or ethnicity of any group that's before them. I absolutely do not believe that.[9]
And regarding the statement itself, she said,
It was bad, because it left an impression that I believed that life experiences commanded a result in a case, but that's clearly not what I do as a judge. It's clearly not what I intended in the context of my broader speech, which was attempting to inspire young Hispanic, Latino students and lawyers to believe that their life experiences added value to the process.[10]
Clearly, the "wise Latina" statement, when viewed in context, absolutely does not support the conclusion that some extremely right-wing conservatives have reached. Indeed, as will be discussed in more detail below, the careful nature of her opinions makes clear that Judge Sotomayor does not decide cases based on anything other than a reasoned view of the law.[11]
But it is also true that, as Justice Ginsburg wrote in her dissent in Ricci v. DeStefano,[12] "[c]ontext matters." Justice Ginsburg has been forthright about the extent to which her background has influenced her views of particular cases, but then again, so has Justice Alito.[13] Moreover, a number of recent cases, including Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.[14] and AT&T v. Hulteen,[15] the majority of the Court did not appreciate the realities of the workplace for women and other workers protected by federal antidiscrimination laws. By contrast, Judge Sotomayor's record, as set forth below, demonstrates that in many cases, she brings a real-world perspective to bear. Assuming Judge Sotomayor is confirmed, her ability to do so will provide a particularly important contribution to the Court.
[1] The Maternity Center Association, currently known as Childbirth Connection, has worked as a national not-for-profit organization to improve the quality of maternity care through research, education, advocacy, and demonstration of maternity innovations since 1918. See http://www.childbirthconnection.org.
[2] The Belizean Grove was described on Judge Sotomayor's Judiciary Committee Questionnaire as a private association of female professionals from the profit, non-profit, and social sectors. In June, Judge Sotomayor resigned her membership. See Associated Press, Sotomayor Resigns from All-Women's Club, New York Times, Jun. 20, 2009, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/us/politics/20grove.html.
[3] See American Bar Association, Ratings of Article III Judicial Nominees: 111th Congress, available at http://www.abanet.org/scfedjud/ratings/ratings111.pdf.
[4] See Senate Judiciary Committee, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court - Sonia Sotomayor - Letters and Materials, available at http://judiciary.senate.gov/nominations/SupremeCourt/Sotomayor/SoniaSotomayor-Letters.cfm.
[5] Nina Totenberg, Is Sonia Sotomayor Mean?, National Public Radio, Jun. 15, 2009, available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105343155.
[6] Sonia Sotomayor, A Latina Judge's Voice, 13 Berkeley La Raza L.J. 87, 92 (2002), available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/politics/15judge.text.html?pagewant....
[7] Id. at 92. Judge Sotomayor had made similar statements in earlier speeches, with minor differences. For example, in 1994 Judge Sotomayor elaborated on a statement that a wise woman would reach a better conclusion by stating, "What is better? I like professor Resnik hope that better will mean a more compassionate, and caring conclusion." Sonia Sotomayor, Remarks at Panel Presentation at 40th National Conference of Law Reviews, Puerto Rico: Women in the Judiciary 11 (Mar. 17, 1994) (transcript available at http://judiciary.senate.gov/nominations/SupremeCourt/Sotomayor/upload/Question-12-d-No-5-3-17-94-women-in-the-judiciary.pdf).
[8] Transcript, Hearing: Nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to be Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Jul. 14, 2009, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/us/politics/14confirm-text.html?_r=1&ref=politics.
[9] Transcript, Hearing: Nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to be Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Jul. 15, 2009, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/us/politics/15confirm-text.html?ref=politics.
[10]Transcript, Hearing: Nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to be Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Jul. 14, 2009, available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/us/politics/14confirm-text.html?_r=1&ref=politics.
[11] In addition, Tom Goldstein, a Supreme Court practitioner who has reviewed Judge Sotomayor's cases, has concluded that she has not demonstrated racial bias in her votes or decisions in cases dealing with race discrimination. Tom Goldstein, Judge Sotomayor and Race: Results from the Full Data Set, SCOTUSblog, May 29, 2009, available at http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/judge-sotomayor-and-race-results-from-the-full-data-set/. Numerous reporters and commentators have concurred in that opinion. See, e.g., Greg Stohr, Sotomayor Took Cautious Approach in Cases on Race, Gun Rights, Bloomberg.com, May 28, 2009, available at http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=a9DyXLjNi9PU; Nina Totenberg, Sotomayor's Judicial History: Racially Biased?, NPR Morning Edition, Jun. 5, 2009, available at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104941870; Marc Ambinder, Sotomayor and Race: Read Her Opinions, The Atlantic, May 30, 2009, available at http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/05/sotomayor_and_race_read_her_opinions.php; and Charlie Savage, Uncertain Evidence for