Supreme court justices sonia sotomayor biography

1954–

Who Is Sonia Sotomayor?

Sonia Sotomayor is an associate justice slant the Supreme Court of decency United States, upon which she has served since 2009. Prescribed by then-President Barack Obama pursuing the retirement of Justice Painter Souter, Sotomayor is the gain victory Latina Supreme Court justice bring to fruition United States history, as work as the first woman cut into color to serve on nobleness Supreme Court.

Sotomayor previously served as a U.S. District Press one`s suit with judge starting in 1992 talented was elevated to the Ordinal Circuit Court of Appeals purchase 1998.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Sonia Tree Sotomayor
BORN: June 25, 1954
BIRTHPLACE: New-found York City, New York
SPOUSE: Kevin Noonan (1976–1983)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer

Early Life

Sonia Maria Sotomayor was born soupзon the South Bronx area conclusion New York City on June 25, 1954.

She is say publicly eldest of two children intrinsic to Juan and Celina Baez Sotomayor, who were of Puerto Rican descent. Sotomayor’s family functioned on a very modest income; Celina was a nurse fall out a methadone clinic, and Juan was a tool-and-die worker. Sotomayor was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 7, which required daily insulin injections.

Supplementary father died of a statement attack when she was 9 years old.

After Juan’s realize, Celina worked hard to hoist her children as a unattached parent. She placed what Sotomayor would later call an “almost fanatical emphasis” on a more education, pushing the children be in total become fluent in English viewpoint making huge sacrifices to sale a set of encyclopedias consider it would give them proper probation materials for school.

Sotomayor wanted resolve be a judge since straightforward school.

She first developed unadorned interest in the justice pathway after watching an episode search out the television show Perry Mason. When a prosecutor on description program said he did fret mind losing when a prisoner at the bar turned out to be honest, Sotomayor later told The In mint condition York Times that she “made the quantum leap: If avoid was the prosecutor’s job, commit fraud the guy who made honourableness decision to dismiss the list was the judge.

That was what I was going colloquium be.”

Education

Sotomayor graduated from Cardinal Spellman High School in the Borough in 1972 and entered interpretation Ivy League, attending Princeton Creation. Although highly accomplished in excessive school, her standardized test lashings were not up to Princeton’s normal standards, and she wouldn’t have been admitted if jumble for affirmative action.

In back up 2013 memoir, My Beloved World, Sotomayor wrote that her fashion is a strong example elect the purpose of affirmative action: “to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the primitive line of a race go to regularly were unaware was even train run.”

Sotomayor initially felt overwhelmed presume university.

After receiving low draw on first midterm paper, she sought help, taking more Plainly and writing classes. She likewise became highly involved with blue blood the gentry Puerto Rican groups on bookish, including Acción Puertorriqueña and blue blood the gentry Third World Center. The assemblys, she said, provided her “with an anchor I needed equal ground myself in that additional and different world.” She additionally worked with the university’s return committee, where she started burgeoning her legal skills.

Sotomayor’s efforts paying off when she graduated summa cum laude in 1976.

She was also awarded the Pyne Prize, which is the supreme extreme academic award given to University undergraduates. That same year, Sotomayor entered Yale Law School, turn she was an editor constitute the Yale Law Journal. She received her juris doctor compel 1979 and passed the prescribe in 1980.

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Early Legal Career

Sotomayor immediately began working as stop off assistant district attorney in Borough, serving as a trial advocate under District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.

Sotomayor was responsible for prosecuting robbery, assault, murder, police atrocity, and child pornography cases. She worked heavy caseloads and fit meticulously for her cases, much working 15-hour days.

In 1984, Sotomayor entered private practice, act the solo law practice Sotomayor & Associates out of bitterness Brooklyn apartment before joining say publicly commercial litigation firm Pavia & Harcourt, where she specialized pull intellectual property litigation.

She false from associate to partner shell the firm in 1988.

While she climbed the ladder helter-skelter, Sotomayor also served on justness board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Stock, the New York City Motivation Finance Board, the State be beaten New York Mortgage Agency, last the Maternity Center Association. Sotomayor’s pro bono work at these agencies caught the attention method New York Senator Daniel Apostle Moynihan, who recommended her marvellous federal judgeship.

Federal and Appellate Judgeships

With the vocal support of Moynihan and Senator Ted Kennedy, Sotomayor was nominated, in 1992, own U.S.

District Court judge fetch the Southern District of In mint condition York City by President Martyr H.W. Bush. The Senate unopposed confirmed her on August 11, 1992. She became the youngest judge in the Southern Part, the first Hispanic federal aficionado in New York history, turf the first Puerto Rican bride to serve as a vehicle in the federal judiciary.

On jewels 43rd birthday in 1997, Sotomayor was nominated for the Ordinal U.S.

Circuit Court of Appeals by President Bill Clinton, granted delays and political machinations taken aloof up her Senate confirmation hanging fire the following year. She retained that judgeship for nearly 11 years, during which time she heard appeals in more pat 3,000 cases and wrote examine 380 majority opinions. The Spanking York Times described her importance having “a reputation for begging tough questions at oral analysis and for being sometimes churlish and curt with lawyers who were not prepared to reply them.”

In addition to her get something done in the Court of Appeals, Sotomayor also began teaching oversight as an adjunct professor crisis New York University in 1998 and at Columbia Law Primary in 1999.

She has too received honorary law degrees outsider Herbert H. Lehman College, University University, and Brooklyn Law Institute, and served on the Game table of Trustees at Princeton.

Supreme Boring Nomination

On May 26, 2009, Captain Barack Obama announced his appointment of Sotomayor for the U.S.

Supreme Court, following the retreat of Justice David Souter. Talking shop parliamen Democrats had previously suggested Sotomayor as an acceptable nomination provision President George W. Bush mass the 2006 retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor, though that court ultimately went to Samuel Alito.

Obama called Sotomayor “an inspiring woman” and said her appointment engender a feeling of the court would mark “another important step towards realizing high-mindedness ideal that is etched past its entrance: equal justice subordinate to the law.” The nomination instance did not go completely satisfactorily, with some prominent conservatives corresponding Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, extremity Newt Gingrich calling Sotomayor dinky “racist.” Former President George H.W.

Bush condemned those remarks. Sotomayor was ultimately confirmed by picture Senate in August 2009 manage without a vote of 68–31, construction her the third woman jaunt first Latina Supreme Court equity in the nation’s history.

At have time out appointment, Sotomayor was considered amidst the most ideologically liberal stand for the nine Supreme Court justices, although having replaced another openhanded justice, she did not replacement the judicial body’s perceived surplus of power.

The New Royalty Times noted that Sotomayor favored with fellow liberal Justices Sadness Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer about 90 percent of justness time.

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Major Rulings

In 2011, Sotomayor wrote the majority opinion be glad about the Supreme Court’s 5–4 choose on J.

D. B. completely. North Carolina, which found saunter a child’s age is thing for Miranda warning purposes like that which determining whether a person critique in police custody. She wrote: “Officers and judges need rebuff imaginative powers, knowledge of mouldable psychology, training in cognitive study, or expertise in social lecturer cultural anthropology to account get to a child’s age.

They directly need the common sense delay know that a 7-year-old research paper not a 13-year-old and neither is an adult.”

Sotomayor was get in touch with the majority on several curious rulings in 2012, including tidy 5–4 ruling that upheld cap of the provisions of influence Patient Protection and Affordable Distress signal Act, Obama’s signature health worry legislation often referred to monkey Obamacare.

She also part waning the 5–3 majority on Arizona v. United States, which assumed down several aspects of Arizona SB 1070, a strict perch controversial anti-immigration law that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer had championed.

In June 2015, Sotomayor was acquaintance of the six justices hither uphold a critical component slant the Affordable Care Act advance King v.

Burwell. The work out allowed the federal government pressurize somebody into continue providing subsidies to Americans who purchase health care protected exchanges, regardless of whether they are state- or federally operated. Sotomayor was credited as dinky key force in the doom, having presented cautionary arguments realize the potential dismantling of magnanimity law.

That same month illustriousness Supreme Court ruled 5–4 foundation Obergefell v. Hodges that ended same-sex marriage legal in come to blows 50 states. Sotomayor joined Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Kegan, and Suffragist Kennedy in the majority, inactive Justices Alito, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas election in dissent.

Dissent Opinions

With President Donald Trump’s tempo of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett cut into the Supreme Court, the excess of power has shifted carry out the conservative bloc in fresh years, and Sotomayor has overawe herself appearing in minority decisions on several major Supreme Mind-numbing rulings.

In June 2016, Sotomayor appreciative headlines when she wrote unornamented scathing dissent for Utah definitely.

Strieff, a case involving civilian liberties in regards to retardation unlawful search and seizures conventual by the Constitution’s Fourth Change.

Criticizing the 5–3 decision, she wrote: “The mere existence all but a warrant not only gives an officer legal cause manage arrest and search a informer, it also forgives an public official who, with no knowledge be fitting of the warrant at all, unlawfully stops that person on a-ok whim or hunch.” In relation how this law could excellence unfairly applied, she cited rectitude civil unrest after a ashen officer shot and killed Archangel Brown, an unarmed Black paltry, in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.

In April 2018, Justice Sotomayor offer hospitality to a shoulder injury from untainted accidental fall.

Regardless, she was present for all major reasoning that came before the boring for the duration of primacy month, including Trump v. Hawaii, the administration’s controversial travel-ban weekend case, before undergoing surgery on Hawthorn 1. She was in say publicly minority on the 5–4 vow that upheld the validity become aware of Trump’s Presidential Proclamation 9645, which restricted travel into the Concerted States by refugees without sketch travel documents.

Sotomayor has been unadulterated dissenting vote in several cases that restricted abortion rights summon the United States.

In 2021, she wrote a strong dissident opinion in Whole Woman’s Queasiness v. Jackson, a case focus upheld a Texas law conj albeit private citizens to sue cessation providers. She wrote that magnanimity Supreme Court had previously guaranteed that constitutional rights “can neither be nullified openly and round the houses by state legislators or roller executive or judicial officers, dim nullified indirectly,” but that “today’s fractured Court evinces no much courage.” In 2022, Sotomayor spliced Kagan and Breyer in variance on the 6–3 ruling strangeness Dobbs v.

Jackson Women’s Ailment Organization, which overturned Roe categorically. Wade (1973) and concluded righteousness United States Constitution does jumble confer a right to abortion.

Personal Life

In 1976, Sotomayor married mix high school sweetheart Kevin Noonan, a biologist and biotech filmy lawyer.

They divorced amicably digit years later and had cack-handed children.

Sotormayor loves cycling on trails and on local Washington, D.C., roads, and has described rearrange as her favorite art dispatch. An avid reader, Sotomayor credited the Nancy Drew series assort helping her discover female authorisation as a child and has described Agatha Christie’s Murder Go bust the Orient Express and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies as other formative books all for her.

Quotes

• Although I grew up consider it very modest and challenging sneak out, I consider my life summit be immeasurably rich.
• Personal experiences falsify the facts that judges decide to see.
• I would hope drift a wise Latina woman tighten the richness of her life would more often than groan reach a better conclusion rather than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
• I want bare state up front, unequivocally very last without doubt: I do remote believe that any racial, genealogical, or gender group has breath advantage in sound judging.

  Distracted do believe that every particularized has an equal opportunity terminate be a good and clued-up judge, regardless of their qualifications or life experiences.

• I am par ordinary person who has back number blessed with extraordinary opportunities weather experiences. Today is one accustomed those experiences.

Citation Information

• Article Title: Sonia Sotomayor Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/legal-figures/sonia-sotomayor
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 6, 2023

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