02/28/2016
Que onda RHS ...remember when we did that activity with the spiral and you learned facts about people and decided of you thought they made or to college? I told you one wrong fact and is an important one. Heres the story of Sotomayor... si se puede
Latino All-Star: Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Born in New York, Justice Sotomayor and her younger brother grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx. Her parents had moved from Puerto Rico to New York during World War II. Her father, a factory worker with a third-grade education, died when she was nine years old. She said that turning to books for solace set her on the path to where she is today.
She has frequently described her mother—who served in the Women’s Army Corps during the war, and who went on to work as a nurse—as a force of nature, and a passionate mentor. Her mother pushed the children to become fluent in English and excel in school, and even managed to buy a set of encyclopedias she could scarcely afford, to help them complete school projects.
Justice Sotomayor flourished in school, despite having to manage juvenile diabetes. She graduated as valedictorian of her high school class and won a scholarship to Princeton University. Although she was challenged at first, even getting a poor grade on a mid-term, she pushed herself to adapt and graduated summa cm laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She also received the M. Taylor Pyne Prize, Princeton’s highest academic award for undergraduates.
She immediately entered Yale Law School, where she was editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order, before earning her Juris Doctor. After passing the bar, she became an assistant district attorney in Manhattan and subsequently entered private practice, specializing in intellectual property litigation.
Her pro bono work caught the attention of Senators Edward Kennedy and Daniel Moynihan, and she was appointed a U.S. District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York City, under former President George H.W. Bush, becoming the court’s youngest judge.
She was seated as a judge on the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals under President Clinton and became an adjunct law professor at New York University and then at Columbia.
In 2009, under President Barack Obama, she became the first Latina, and third female Supreme Court Justice in U.S. history.
Justice Sotomayor has been the recipient of numerous honors, including honorary law degrees from Herbert H. Lehman College (CUNY), Princeton University, and Brooklyn Law School, and has served on the boards of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the New York City Campaign Finance Board, and on the Board of Trustees at Princeton.
“I really believe in paying back and paying forward,” she said on a visit to Pomona College in 2015. “We have an obligation for those of us who have come from the backgrounds we have, who have reached a privilege that most of our community members don’t have…. You can’t choose to live your life just for yourself…you’re here because of all the people who came before you, who opened the doors to this college, to you. And you have to keep those doors open for the kids that come after you.”
