Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

Sonia Sotomayor was born on 25 June 1954 in the Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. She is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving since August 2009. Sotomayor is the Court's 111th justice, its first Hispanic justice, and its third female justice.

Family notes

• Father: (tool and die maker, died when she was nine)
• Mother: Celina (nurse at a methadone clinic)
• Brother: Juan, a physician
• husband: Kevin Edward Noonan (married Aug. 14, 1976, divorced 1983)
• Education: Cardinal Spellman High School, Bronx, NY
• Princeton University, B.A. 1976, summa cum laude; Phi Beta Kappa, M. Taylor Pyne Prize
• Yale Law School, J.D. 1979
• Yale Law School, L.L.D. 1999,

the quotable Judge

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.

don't snow her

Lawyers before her court viewed her as plain-spoken, intelligent, demanding, and sometimes somewhat unforgiving; one said, [19]

"She does not have much patience for people trying to snow her. You can't do it."

she changed the ball game

• Her relative proximity to Yankee Stadium led to her becoming a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees.[21]
• On March 30, 1995, in Silverman v. Major League Baseball Player Relations Committee, Inc.,[88] Sotomayor issued a preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball, preventing it from unilaterally implementing a new collective bargaining agreement and using replacement players. Her ruling ended the 1994 baseball strike after 232 days, the day before the new season was scheduled to begin. The Second Circuit upheld Sotomayor's decision and denied the owners' request to stay the ruling.[21][89][90] The decision raised her profile,[11] won her the plaudits of baseball fans,[21] and had a lasting effect on the game.[91]

What's in a name?

In June 2010, the Bronxdale Houses development, where Sotomayor grew up, was renamed after her. The Justice Sonia Sotomayor Houses and Justice Sonia Sotomayor Community Center comprise 28 buildings with some 3,500 residents. While many New York housing developments are named after well-known people, this was only the second to be named after a former resident.[223]

a woman of discipline

WASHINGTON — Judge Sonia Sotomayor carries a small black travel pouch, not much larger than a wallet. It contains the implements she needs — a blood sugar testing kit, a needle and insulin — to manage diabetes, a disease she has had for 46 years. Friends say she is not shy about using it.

“She’ll be eating Chinese dumplings,” said Xavier Romeu Matta, a former law clerk to the judge, “and she’ll say, ‘Excuse me sweetie,’ and pull out the kit and inject her insulin.”

That no-nonsense attitude, combined with the attention to detail that characterizes her legal opinions, has been a hallmark of Judge Sotomayor’s approach to Type 1 diabetes, according to friends, colleagues and her longtime doctor, Andrew Jay Drexler. An endocrinologist in Los Angeles, Dr. Drexler pronounced her “in very good health” in a letter provided by the White House. [1]

New York City is her essence

A daughter of the Bronx, Sonia Sotomayor claims the Brooklyn Bridge as her power-walking trail, the specialty shops of Greenwich Village as her grocery store, and the United States Court House as the setting for her annual Christmas party, where judges and janitors spill into the hallway.

Her passions run toward the Metropolitan Opera and the ballet, not to mention her beloved Yankees. She eats with friends at Nobu in TriBeCa and works off calories on a treadmill in her bedroom. She is not a rollicking sort, her sense of humor coming in a minor key, yet she holds friendships dear and is godmother to the children of lawyers and secretaries alike.

“If you had to describe my sister, you’d say New Yorker — it’s her essence,” said her brother, Juan Sotomayor, a doctor who lives near Syracuse. “I always joke that her vision does not extend beyond the Hudson River.” [2]

More Sonia Sotomayor Biography

Sonia Sotomayor, raised in poverty, was nominated on May 26, 2009, for the United States Supreme Court by President Barack Obama. After contentious confirmation hearings, Sonia Sotomayor became the first Hispanic Justice and third woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Sonia Sotomayor was raised in the Bronx in a housing project. Her parents were born in Puerto Rico, and came to New York during World War II.

Sonia Sotomayor was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes (Type I) when she was 8. She spoke mostly Spanish until the death of her father, a tool and die maker, when she was 9. Her mother, Celina, worked for a methadone clinic as a nurse, and sent her two children, Juan (now a physician) and Sonia, to private Catholic schools.

Links

• Sonia Sotomayor Biography, Jone Johnson Lewis, About.com Guide
• Wikipedia: Sonia Sotomayor
• iMDB: Sonia Sotomayor
• Library of Congress: Sonia Sotomayor

Citations

1. New York Times: Court Nominee Manages Diabetes With Discipline Published: July 9, 2009 retrieved 16 June 2011
2. New York Times: To Get to Sotomayor’s Core, Start in New York. Published: July 9, 2009. retrieved 16 June 2011

• [19] McKinley, James C. (April 1, 1995). "Woman in the News; Strike-Zone Arbitrator — Sonia Sotomayor". The New York Times.
• [21] Smith, Greg B. (October 24, 1998). "Judge's Journey to Top: Bronx' Sotomayor Rose From Projects to Court of Appeals". New York Daily News.
• [223] Mayor of New York City (June 4, 2010). "Mayor Bloomberg and New York City Housing Authority Chairman Rhea Rename Bronx Development in Honor of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor". Press release.

Related Articles

• List of Famous Puerto Ricans
• Sonia Sotomayor – Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
• Sonia Sotomayor Jokes - Late-Night Jokes About Sonia Sotomayor
• "A Latina Judge’s Voice" (Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture), in symposium "Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation", Berkeley La Raza Law Journal (Spring 2002)
• Biography and writings at the Legal Information Institute
• Collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Sociedad Ancestros Mocanos - Facebook, Maria L. Aldahondo: Watching Sotomayor and Longoria: A conversation -on Link TV--The Judge is clarifying her father is from Manati and her previous information was wrong. She had someone do her genealogy in PR. Isn't one branch of OUR Sotomayor in Manati?! (Feb. 8, 2013).