Sonia Sotomayor
Sonia Sotomayor
Sonia Maria Sotomayoris an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, serving since August 2009. She has the distinction of being its first justice of Hispanic heritage, the first Latina, its third female justice, and its twelfth Roman Catholic justice. Sotomayor, along with John Roberts and Elena Kagan, is one of the youngest justices on the Supreme Court...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSupreme Court Justice
Date of Birth25 June 1954
CityBronx, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Sonia Sotomayor quotes about
I am a New Yorker, and 7:00 A.M. is a civilized hour to finish the day, not to start it.
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.
I do know one thing about me: I don't measure myself by others' expectations or let others define my worth.
There are no bystanders in life [...] Our humanity makes us each a part of something greater than ourselves.
To me, lawyering is the height of service - and being involved in this profession is a gift.
I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences, but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.
Although I grew up in very modest and challenging circumstances, I consider my life to be immeasurably rich.
My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
We have to look and ensure that we're paying attention to what we're doing, so that we don't reflexively institute processes and procedures that exclude people without thought.
I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.
Each time I see a split infinitive, an inconsistent tense structure or the unnecessary use of the passive voice, I blister.
I have had positive experiences with cameras. When I have been asked to join experiments using cameras in the courtroom, I have participated; I have volunteered.
how many times would a defendant's lawyer enter the courtroom before a session and ask each of the male clerks and paralegals around me, 'Are you the assistant in charge?' while I sat there invisible to him at the head of the table?
Don't mistake politeness for lack of strength.