On May 26th, 2009 President Barack Obama nominated Judge Sotomayor to substitute Justice David Souter in the U.S. Supreme Court. Sotomayor is Puerto Rican and was born in the Bronx, NY. She was raised by her mother after her father died when she was nine. She graduated from Princeton in 1976 and Yale in 1979. She was editor of the Yale Law Journal and worked a s an Assistant District Attorney in New York. After this she went into a private practice in 1984. In 1991 she was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush, and afterword confirmed in 1992. Bill Clinton nominated her the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1997, she was then confirmed and joined the court in 1998. She was an Adjunct Professor at New York University School of Law from 1198 to 2007. She has also been a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School since 1999.
Sotomayor ruled in numerous prestigious cases, like in 1995 when she issued the preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball which finally finished the 1994 Baseball Strike. She permitted the Wall Street Journal to publish Vince Foster’s suicide not.
Sonia was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was eight. What inspired her to go into a legal career was watching the Perry Manson show. Sotomayor’s “life inspiration” was her mother, she valued education very much and bought the Encyclopedia Britannica for her children. She was also in the Women’s Army Corps. Sotomayor went to Cardinal Spellman High School which is a parochial school in the Bronx. Sotomayor was on the forensics team and was elected to the student government and graduated valedictorian in 1972.
At Princeton, she was among very few women and even fewer Latinos, she became a non-radical student activist. She was a co-chair of the Accion Puertorriquena organization that looked for opportunities for Puerto Rican students, where she took part in writing a letter of complaint with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare to say that the school discriminated in its hiring and admission practices. She was a history major, and she wrote her senior thesis on Luis Munoz Marin, who was the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico. She won the Pyne Prize, which is the top award for undergraduates and reflected both strong grades and extracurricular activities. Sotomayor entered Yale Law School in fall of 1976 and in her third year, filed a complaint against a Washington, D.C. law firm for asking discriminatory questions during recruiting and the firm then apologized.
It is clear that, to the democrats, Sonia Sotomayor is plenty qualified and has a plethora of challenges that she has overcome and an overabundance of accomplishments. But, what about the republicans? They are looking at a risky fight, the party is still trying to gain ground after the elections, especially with minorities, so it would be a bad idea to oppose President Obama’s nomination. But, because of her former rulings, the GOP is afraid that she would put her feelings above the Constitution. So, even though it would be better politically to agree with Obama’s nomination, it goes against their philosophy as republicans. I personally believe that Sonia Sotomayor is completely qualified and would be the perfect thing for the U.S. Supreme Court, but, in order for her to be confirmed, she needs to get the republicans to support her as well.