Officials tell The Associated Press that President Barack Obama intends to nominate federal appeals court judge Sonia Sotomayor (SUHN’-ya soh-toh-my-YOR’) as the first Hispanic to serve on the Supreme Court. Sotomayor, 54, would succeed retiring Justice David Souter if confirmed by the Senate. The officials spoke to AP on condition of anonymity because Obama has not yet announced his decision.
Sonia Sotomayor’s path to the pinnacle of the legal profession began in the 1960s at a Bronx housing project just a couple blocks from Yankee Stadium, where she and her family dealt with one struggle after another. She suffered juvenile diabetes that forced her to start insulin injections at age 8. Her father died the next year, leaving her to be raised by her mother – a nurse at a methadone clinic who always kept a pot of rice and beans on the stove. The parents had immigrated from Puerto Rico. Sotomayor immersed herself in Nancy Drew books and spent hours watching Perry Mason on television, and knew she wanted to be a judge by the age of 10 after being inspired by a Perry Mason episode that ended with the camera settling on the robed sage. “I realized that the judge was the most important player in that room,” Sotomayor said in a 1998 interview with The Associated Press. Now, Sotomayor is one of the most important players in the nation after being nominated for a Supreme Court seat by President Barack Obama. It is the crowning accomplishment in a career that included a long list of achievements: Yale Law School; a stint as a prosecutor and at a Manhattan law firm; a key ruling in 1995 that brought Major League Baseball back to the nation after a strike; and most recently a job as a federal appeals judge.
She also has that “empathy” Obama’s looking for that allows her to impart her own preferences to the Constitution:
She has an extremely high rate of her decisions being reversed, indicating that she is far more of a liberal activist than even the current liberal activist Supreme Court.
Here’s what the likely schedule will be for the nomination barring any uncovering of controversy:
The White House will announce a Supreme Court nominee at 10a.m. The Senate Judiciary Committee will likely hold hearings in the third week of July, permitting written committee questions the following week and a floor vote before Congress leaves for its summer recess on the weekend of August 8. Absent the discovery of an ethical transgression, the Democratic majority on the Senate guarantees confirmation, so the new Justice will take her seat when the Court opens its 2009 Term on October 5.
The case against Sotomayor, as made by TNR.
