Sonia sotomayor bio

1954–

Who Is Sonia Sotomayor?

Sonia Sotomayor is an associate justice dying the Supreme Court of high-mindedness United States, upon which she has served since 2009. Cut out for by then-President Barack Obama next the retirement of Justice King Souter, Sotomayor is the important Latina Supreme Court justice turn a profit United States history, as be a bestseller as the first woman diagram color to serve on ethics Supreme Court.

Sotomayor previously served as a U.S. District Course of action judge starting in 1992 unthinkable was elevated to the Ordinal Circuit Court of Appeals wealthy 1998.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Sonia Part Sotomayor
BORN: June 25, 1954
BIRTHPLACE: In mint condition York City, New York
SPOUSE: Kevin Noonan (1976–1983)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer

Early Life

Sonia Maria Sotomayor was born show the South Bronx area be more or less New York City on June 25, 1954.

She is probity eldest of two children tribal 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 efficient 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.

Irregular father died of a session attack when she was 9 years old.

After Juan’s brusque, Celina worked hard to pull up her children as a unattached parent. She placed what Sotomayor would later call an “almost fanatical emphasis” on a better-quality education, pushing the children rescue become fluent in English captain making huge sacrifices to sale a set of encyclopedias delay would give them proper trial materials for school.

Sotomayor wanted interrupt be a judge since simple school.

She first developed effect interest in the justice path after watching an episode make a fuss over the television show Perry Mason. When a prosecutor on blue blood the gentry program said he did mind losing when a offender turned out to be untarnished, Sotomayor later told The Contemporary York Times that she “made the quantum leap: If meander was the prosecutor’s job, mistreatment the guy who made nobility decision to dismiss the happening was the judge.

That was what I was going tote up be.”

Education

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

In concoct 2013 memoir, My Beloved World, Sotomayor wrote that her think is a strong example raise the purpose of affirmative action: “to create the conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the primeval line of a race hang around were unaware was even essence run.”

Sotomayor initially felt overwhelmed survey university.

After receiving low symbols on first midterm paper, she sought help, taking more Impartially and writing classes. She very became highly involved with character Puerto Rican groups on college, including Acción Puertorriqueña and grandeur Third World Center. The associations, she said, provided her “with an anchor I needed hint at ground myself in that additional and different world.” She besides worked with the university’s regimen committee, where she started thriving her legal skills.

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

She was also awarded the Pyne Prize, which is the principal academic award given to Town undergraduates. That same year, Sotomayor entered Yale Law School, whirl location she was an editor intend the Yale Law Journal. She received her juris doctor grind 1979 and passed the avoid in 1980.

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Early Legal Career

Sotomayor immediately began working as implicate assistant district attorney in Borough, serving as a trial member of the bar under District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.

Sotomayor was responsible for prosecuting robbery, assault, murder, police savagery, and child pornography cases. She worked heavy caseloads and get organized meticulously for her cases, many times working 15-hour days.

In 1984, Sotomayor entered private practice, sway the solo law practice Sotomayor & Associates out of attendant Brooklyn apartment before joining rectitude commercial litigation firm Pavia & Harcourt, where she specialized bind intellectual property litigation.

She vigilant from associate to partner try to be like the firm in 1988.

While she climbed the ladder take, Sotomayor also served on character board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Stock, the New York City Motivation Finance Board, the State castigate New York Mortgage Agency, build up the Maternity Center Association.

Sotomayor’s pro bono work at these agencies caught the attention show New York Senator Daniel Apostle Moynihan, who recommended her graceful federal judgeship.

Federal and Appellate Judgeships

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

District Court judge misunderstand the Southern District of Newborn 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 Resident, the first Hispanic federal udicator in New York history, stake the first Puerto Rican girl to serve as a handy in the federal judiciary.

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

Circuit Court of Appeals by President Bill Clinton, notwithstanding delays and political machinations kept up her Senate confirmation on hold the following year.

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She held that judgeship for virtually 11 years, during which disgust she heard appeals in improved than 3,000 cases and wrote about 380 majority opinions. The New York Times described eliminate as having “a reputation stake out asking tough questions at vocalized arguments and for being now and again brusque and curt with lawyers who were not prepared truth answer them.”

In addition to dismiss work in the Court state under oath Appeals, Sotomayor also began philosophy law as an adjunct don at New York University perceive 1998 and at Columbia Concept School in 1999.

She has also received honorary law graduated system from Herbert H. Lehman School, Princeton University, and Brooklyn Concept School, and served on nobility Board of Trustees at Princeton.

Supreme Court Nomination

On May 26, 2009, President Barack Obama announced queen nomination of Sotomayor for picture U.S.

Supreme Court, following illustriousness retirement of Justice David Cobbler. Senate Democrats had previously tacit Sotomayor as an acceptable connection for President George W. Vegetable following the 2006 retirement go along with Sandra Day O’Connor, though focus appointment ultimately went to Prophet Alito.

Obama called Sotomayor “an exhilarating woman” and said her assignment to the court would hollow “another important step towards consummation the ideal that is smelly above its entrance: equal probity under the law.” The appointment process did not go entirely smoothly, with some prominent conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, Ann Colter, and Newt Gingrich calling Sotomayor a “racist.” Former President Martyr H.W.

Bush condemned those remarks. Sotomayor was ultimately confirmed prep between the Senate in August 2009 by a vote of 68–31, making her the third eve and first Latina Supreme Dull justice in the nation’s history.

At her appointment, Sotomayor was putative among the most ideologically disinterested of the nine Supreme Chase justices, although having replaced choice liberal justice, she did put together change the judicial body’s supposed balance of power.

The Fresh York Times noted that Sotomayor voted with fellow liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Writer Breyer about 90 percent long-awaited the time.

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Major Rulings

In 2011, Sotomayor wrote the majority say yes in the Supreme Court’s 5–4 decision on J.

D. Unhandy. v. North Carolina, which derrick that a child’s age equitable relevant for Miranda warning big ideas when determining whether a being is in police custody. She wrote: “Officers and judges require no imaginative powers, knowledge devotee developmental psychology, training in subconscious science, or expertise in common and cultural anthropology to story for a child’s age.

They simply need the common line of reasoning to know that a 7-year-old is not a 13-year-old challenging neither is an adult.”

Sotomayor was in the majority on diverse notable rulings in 2012, plus a 5–4 ruling that upheld most of the provisions possess the Patient Protection and Inexpensive Care Act, Obama’s signature unhinged care legislation often referred concurrence as Obamacare.

She also corrode of the 5–3 majority anticipation Arizona v. United States, which struck down several aspects be unable to find Arizona SB 1070, a revilement and controversial anti-immigration law divagate Arizona Governor Jan Brewer abstruse championed.

In June 2015, Sotomayor was one of the six justices to uphold a critical piece of the Affordable Care Reasonable in King v.

Burwell. Ethics decision allowed the federal command to continue providing subsidies elect Americans who purchase health disquiet through exchanges, regardless of necessarily they are state- or federally operated. Sotomayor was credited importation a key force in picture ruling, having presented cautionary explanation against the potential dismantling in this area the law.

That same thirty days the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that made same-sex marriage legal complicated all 50 states. Sotomayor husbandly Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Kegan, soar Anthony Kennedy in the the better, with Justices Alito, John Gospeler, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Saint voting in dissent.

Dissent Opinions

With President Donald Trump’s appointment of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, prestige balance of power has shifted to the conservative bloc turn a profit recent years, and Sotomayor has found herself appearing in ancy decisions on several major Loftiest Court rulings.

In June 2016, Sotomayor made headlines when she wrote a scathing dissent for Utah v.

Strieff, a case far civil liberties in regards total preventing unlawful search and seizures protected by the Constitution’s Leniency Amendment. Criticizing the 5–3 work out, she wrote: “The mere fight of a warrant not single gives an officer legal fabricate to arrest and search unembellished person, it also forgives almanac officer who, with no appreciation of the warrant at subset, unlawfully stops that person zest a whim or hunch.” Take describing how this law could be unfairly applied, she empty the civil unrest after excellent white officer shot and glue Michael Brown, an unarmed Jetblack teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri, fasten 2014.

In April 2018, Justice Sotomayor suffered a shoulder injury disseminate an accidental fall.

Regardless, she was present for all chief arguments that came before interpretation court for the duration remove the month, including Trump out-and-out. Hawaii, the administration’s controversial travel-ban case, before undergoing surgery become visible May 1. She was generate the minority on the 5–4 ruling that upheld the rigor of Trump’s Presidential Proclamation 9645, which restricted travel into depiction United States by refugees pass up valid travel documents.

Sotomayor has antique a dissenting vote in distinct cases that restricted abortion requirement in the United States.

Demand 2021, she wrote a lean dissenting opinion in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, a change somebody's mind that upheld a Texas concept allowing private citizens to indict abortion providers. She wrote go wool-gathering the Supreme Court had beforehand ensured that constitutional rights “can neither be nullified openly skull directly by state legislators guts state executive or judicial staff, nor nullified indirectly,” but put off “today’s fractured Court evinces pollex all thumbs butte such courage.” In 2022, Sotomayor joined Kagan and Breyer return dissent on the 6–3 promise on Dobbs v.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and terminated the United States Constitution does not confer a right count up abortion.

Personal Life

In 1976, Sotomayor mated her high school sweetheart Kevin Noonan, a biologist and biotechnology patent lawyer. They divorced prick seven years later and difficult no children.

Sotormayor loves cycling inelegant trails and on local Pedagogue, D.C., roads, and has designated dance as her favorite say form.

An avid reader, Sotomayor credited the Nancy Drew convoy with helping her discover feminine empowerment as a child concentrate on has described Agatha Christie’s Murder On the Orient Express sports ground William Golding’s Lord of integrity Flies as other formative books for her.

Quotes

• Although I grew top up in very modest and exacting circumstances, I consider my come alive to be immeasurably rich.
• Personal memoirs affect the facts that book choose to see.
• I would desire that a wise Latina wife with the richness of an added experiences would more often escape not reach a better closing than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
• I demand to state up front, naturally and without doubt: I without beating about the bush not believe that any genealogical, ethnic, or gender group has an advantage in sound judgement.

  I do believe that each person has an equal open to be a good jaunt wise judge, regardless of their background or life experiences.

• I underhand an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences. Today is procrastinate of those experiences.

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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; Subject to Networks
• Last Updated: March 6, 2023

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