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WASHINGTON DC / The Washington Post / Politics / May 27, 2009
Born amid poverty and the hobbles of racial stereotyping, reared by her mother after her father died when she was a child, diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, the first Hispanic ever nominated to the Supreme Court has a life story that embodies some of the nation's most enduring values. It's an up-by-the-bootstraps saga of grit and triumph.
By James Oliphant, Tribune Washington Bureau
President Obama announces Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee for the Supreme Court on Tuesday at the White House. Alex Brandon / AP
WASHINGTON — For a Puerto Rican teenager struggling upward from the public-housing projects of New York, Princeton University in 1972 was an alien land.
"I felt isolated from all I had ever known," she said later, and the grade she received on one of her first papers drove home the point — sending her flying to find remedial help.
Four years later, Sonia Maria Sotomayor won the Pyne Prize, the highest honor awarded to a Princeton undergraduate. Three years after that, the one-time stranger in a strange land was editor of the Yale Law Review.
Born amid poverty and the hobbles of racial stereotyping, reared by her mother after her father died when she was a child, diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, the first Hispanic ever nominated to the Supreme Court has a life story that embodies some of the nation's most enduring values. It's an up-by-the-bootstraps saga of grit and triumph.
"The kid who didn't know how to write her first semester was honored for her academic excellence and commitment to university service with that award," Sotomayor said in 2002. "In my years there, Princeton taught me that people of color could not only survive there, but that we could flourish and succeed."
As President Obama began sifting through possible choices for his first nomination to the high court, he announced that intellectual distinction would be important, but so would a capacity for empathy — an ability to apply lessons of experience to abstruse legal issues that could touch the lives of ordinary people.
On that basis, it's not hard to see how he might have settled on Sotomayor. In many ways, her life echoes the president's. And, as Obama said in nominating her Tuesday, "she has never forgotten where she began, never lost touch with the community that supported her."
Sotomayor, 54, is poised to succeed beyond the wildest of hopes in 1972. At that time, the high court was the province of white males only. Even now, if confirmed by the Senate, she would become only the third woman and the third minority to serve as a justice.
Described as warm, humble and unassuming, with little inclination to promote herself, Sotomayor beat out several more established candidates for the court.
Raised in the Bronx
In her youth in the Bronx, Sotomayor had no desire to be a judge. Inspired by the Nancy Drew books, she longed to be a police officer or a detective. A diabetes diagnosis when she was 8 altered that equation and convinced her to pursue a more sedate career. Her father died a year later.
Her parents had arrived in New York from Puerto Rico during World War II, and Sotomayor had grown up in a close-knit world where Spanish was the spoken language. She didn't grow comfortable with English until after her father's death.
By then, her mother, Celina, a nurse at a methadone clinic, was working day and night on a mission to send Sotomayor and her brother, Juan, now a doctor, to a private Catholic high school in the Bronx.
"My mother has devoted her life to my brother and me," Sotomayor said Tuesday. "She worked often two jobs to help support us after Dad died. I have often said I am who I am because of her and I am only half the woman she is."
Celina Sotomayor, mother of the Supreme Court nominee, wipes her eye during the president's announcement Tuesday.
Photo by Susan Walsh, AP. Courtesy USA Today
Noted Obama, himself reared by a single mother: "Sonia's mom bought the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood."
After graduation from Yale, as many peers began lucrative careers in the private sector, Sotomayor became a prosecutor in New York. She moved quickly from junior to senior assistant district attorney, prosecuting felonies instead of misdemeanors.
She later moved on to a Manhattan law firm, where she became a partner. But it wasn't long before President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, in a deal with Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, named her to be a U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of New York, one of the nation's busiest courts. She was the first Hispanic female on that court.
In an interview then, she said she spoke of the courts as the "last refuge for the oppressed."
"I'm a down-to-earth litigator," she said, "and that's what I expect I'll be like as a judge."
President Clinton picked her for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1997, but Senate Republicans dragged out her nomination, fearing the appointment would pave the way for an eventual Supreme Court nomination. She was confirmed in 1998 and has been an appeals judge ever since.
Reaches out
As both a district-court judge and on the appeals court, Sotomayor made a conspicuous effort to reach out to clerks, secretaries — every worker in the courthouse.
She "knows all of the doormen. She knows all the cafeteria workers. Knows all the janitors," said Robin Kar, a former clerk and now a law professor at the University of Illinois. "She does understand poverty. She does understand people from all walks of life."
For Sotomayor, her clerks functioned as a sort of surrogate family. Married and divorced, she has no children. A later engagement also ended.
Judge Guido Calabresi, a fellow 2nd Circuit judge who taught the young Sotomayor torts at Yale, said she is the one who organizes dinners for the judges on the court and their spouses.
But he also was quick to praise her for her work on the bench. "She's always a very forceful and powerful judge," Calabresi said. "She has not on an insignificant number of occasions caused me to change my mind. I would read one of the memos she had written on a case and say, 'I think she's got it and I don't.' "
John Fried, who was Sotomayor's supervisor when she was a New York prosecutor, compared Sotomayor to the late Justice Byron White.
"I once had a beer with Whizzer White," Fried said. "He was just a down-to-earth guy. She very much reminded me of that. Unpretentious. A humble-type person who through hard work and effort was given a great opportunity."
Or, as former clerk and mentee Julia Tarver Mason put it: "She has lived a dream life."
Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company
President Obama announces Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee for the Supreme Court on Tuesday at the White House. Alex Brandon / AP
WASHINGTON — For a Puerto Rican teenager struggling upward from the public-housing projects of New York, Princeton University in 1972 was an alien land.
"I felt isolated from all I had ever known," she said later, and the grade she received on one of her first papers drove home the point — sending her flying to find remedial help.
Four years later, Sonia Maria Sotomayor won the Pyne Prize, the highest honor awarded to a Princeton undergraduate. Three years after that, the one-time stranger in a strange land was editor of the Yale Law Review.
Born amid poverty and the hobbles of racial stereotyping, reared by her mother after her father died when she was a child, diagnosed with juvenile diabetes, the first Hispanic ever nominated to the Supreme Court has a life story that embodies some of the nation's most enduring values. It's an up-by-the-bootstraps saga of grit and triumph.
"The kid who didn't know how to write her first semester was honored for her academic excellence and commitment to university service with that award," Sotomayor said in 2002. "In my years there, Princeton taught me that people of color could not only survive there, but that we could flourish and succeed."
As President Obama began sifting through possible choices for his first nomination to the high court, he announced that intellectual distinction would be important, but so would a capacity for empathy — an ability to apply lessons of experience to abstruse legal issues that could touch the lives of ordinary people.
On that basis, it's not hard to see how he might have settled on Sotomayor. In many ways, her life echoes the president's. And, as Obama said in nominating her Tuesday, "she has never forgotten where she began, never lost touch with the community that supported her."
Sotomayor, 54, is poised to succeed beyond the wildest of hopes in 1972. At that time, the high court was the province of white males only. Even now, if confirmed by the Senate, she would become only the third woman and the third minority to serve as a justice.
Described as warm, humble and unassuming, with little inclination to promote herself, Sotomayor beat out several more established candidates for the court.
Raised in the Bronx
In her youth in the Bronx, Sotomayor had no desire to be a judge. Inspired by the Nancy Drew books, she longed to be a police officer or a detective. A diabetes diagnosis when she was 8 altered that equation and convinced her to pursue a more sedate career. Her father died a year later.
Her parents had arrived in New York from Puerto Rico during World War II, and Sotomayor had grown up in a close-knit world where Spanish was the spoken language. She didn't grow comfortable with English until after her father's death.
By then, her mother, Celina, a nurse at a methadone clinic, was working day and night on a mission to send Sotomayor and her brother, Juan, now a doctor, to a private Catholic high school in the Bronx.
"My mother has devoted her life to my brother and me," Sotomayor said Tuesday. "She worked often two jobs to help support us after Dad died. I have often said I am who I am because of her and I am only half the woman she is."
Celina Sotomayor, mother of the Supreme Court nominee, wipes her eye during the president's announcement Tuesday.
Photo by Susan Walsh, AP. Courtesy USA Today
Noted Obama, himself reared by a single mother: "Sonia's mom bought the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood."
After graduation from Yale, as many peers began lucrative careers in the private sector, Sotomayor became a prosecutor in New York. She moved quickly from junior to senior assistant district attorney, prosecuting felonies instead of misdemeanors.
She later moved on to a Manhattan law firm, where she became a partner. But it wasn't long before President George H.W. Bush, a Republican, in a deal with Democratic Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, named her to be a U.S. District Court judge for the Southern District of New York, one of the nation's busiest courts. She was the first Hispanic female on that court.
In an interview then, she said she spoke of the courts as the "last refuge for the oppressed."
"I'm a down-to-earth litigator," she said, "and that's what I expect I'll be like as a judge."
President Clinton picked her for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1997, but Senate Republicans dragged out her nomination, fearing the appointment would pave the way for an eventual Supreme Court nomination. She was confirmed in 1998 and has been an appeals judge ever since.
Reaches out
As both a district-court judge and on the appeals court, Sotomayor made a conspicuous effort to reach out to clerks, secretaries — every worker in the courthouse.
She "knows all of the doormen. She knows all the cafeteria workers. Knows all the janitors," said Robin Kar, a former clerk and now a law professor at the University of Illinois. "She does understand poverty. She does understand people from all walks of life."
For Sotomayor, her clerks functioned as a sort of surrogate family. Married and divorced, she has no children. A later engagement also ended.
Judge Guido Calabresi, a fellow 2nd Circuit judge who taught the young Sotomayor torts at Yale, said she is the one who organizes dinners for the judges on the court and their spouses.
But he also was quick to praise her for her work on the bench. "She's always a very forceful and powerful judge," Calabresi said. "She has not on an insignificant number of occasions caused me to change my mind. I would read one of the memos she had written on a case and say, 'I think she's got it and I don't.' "
John Fried, who was Sotomayor's supervisor when she was a New York prosecutor, compared Sotomayor to the late Justice Byron White.
"I once had a beer with Whizzer White," Fried said. "He was just a down-to-earth guy. She very much reminded me of that. Unpretentious. A humble-type person who through hard work and effort was given a great opportunity."
Or, as former clerk and mentee Julia Tarver Mason put it: "She has lived a dream life."
Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company
