WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama has nominated federal
appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, and
if she is confirmed, the New York native of Puerto Rican
descent would become the first Hispanic to serve on the high
court.
Obama announced his choice of Sotomayor, 54, at a brief event
at the White House May 26. If confirmed by the Senate, she
would join the court when the next term opens in October,
replacing retiring Justice David Souter.
At the White House announcement, Sotomayor described herself
as “an ordinary person who has been blessed with
extraordinary opportunities and experiences.”
Sotomayor has been a judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of
Appeals since 1998, nominated to that post by President Bill
Clinton. Before that she spent six years as a U.S. District
Court judge in New York, nominated to that position by
President George H.W. Bush in 1991. She also served as an
assistant New York County district attorney and worked in
private practice.
She was joined at the White House by her mother, Celina
Sotomayor; her mother’s husband, Omar Lopez; and her brother,
Juan, a New York physician, and his wife and children.
In announcing his choice, Obama called Sotomayor “an
inspiring woman,” who “has never forgotten where she began,”
describing her childhood in a housing project in New York’s
South Bronx section, where she was born in 1954. Her parents
moved to New York from Puerto Rico during the Second World
War.
Obama noted that Sotomayor’s mother had been in the Army
during World War II, beginning a family tradition of public
service and high aspirations. Sotomayor’s father, who had
only a third-grade education and spoke little English, died
when she was 9.
That left her mother often working two jobs to be able to
afford to send her two children to Cardinal Spellman Catholic
School, Obama said.
“They had the only set of encyclopedias in the neighborhood,”
he said.
Her success in high school led to a scholarship to Princeton
University, where she graduated at the top of her class, and
Yale Law School, where she was editor of the law journal.
A notice on the Web site of Cardinal Spellman said she
graduated from the New York archdiocesan school in 1972.
Sotomayor is divorced and has no children. It is unclear if
she is a practicing Catholic. If she is, she would become the
sixth Catholic on the current court, joining Chief Justice
John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy,
Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
