In the first term of his presidency, Barack Obama will have big decisions, like who he will appoint to the Supreme Court. Sonia Sotomayor is one person that keeps popping up in conversations about who will replace likely retiring justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. See photos, a video, and a biography below.
Sonia Sotomayor Photo
Sonia Sotomayor is probably top of the list for an Obama appointment to the Supreme Court. Why? There is one major group that has never had representation on the SCOTUS, and that is Hispanics. She is probably the most prominent Hispanic judge in the country, and she is a women. There have only been two women, and currently only one on the court, who is likely to retire soon. Also, she is a liberal of course.
Sonia Sotomayor was born on June 25, 1954 in The Bronx, New York, so her age is 54. She was born of Puerto Rican decent and into modest circumstances. Her father died at an early age, leaving her mother to raise and support her.
Sotomayor was fortunate enough to be able to attend Princeton University and receive a B.A. summa cum laude in 1976. She then went to Yale for law school, earning her juris doctorate while also serving as the editor of the Yale Law Review. She served as assistant district attorney in New York for a time, then went into private practice.
Ironically, George H. W. Bush appointed her to Federal District Court in 1991. She being a moderate and the appointment being part of an overall deal between senators to appoint other Bush people, made this possible. Later, in 1998, she was appointed to the Second Circuit Federal Appellate Court by Bill Clinton.
Congressional Democrats suggested Sonia Sotomayor for appointment in 2005 while President Bush was considering who to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Conner with. This was criticized by conservatives because she did not fit the ideological profile of George Bush. Instead, Bush chose Samuel Alito.
For more on Sotomayor, go here.
Obama Supreme Court Video
November 24th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
It is sad when one’s primary qualification for a job is race. Tokenism is the Democrat way though.
May 1st, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Sonia Sotoamayor would be an outstanding Supreme Court justice. She has the intellectual ability and judicial experience that merit her appointment. It is indeed sad that her ethnicity is being held against her by prejudice people who somehow find an inconsistency between being Hispanic and being qualified. I questions whether when Roosevelt appointed Brennan to the court taking into consideraiton in Irish Catholic background he was playing identity politics. Identiy politics has been used as a tactic to demean and trivialize the assertion of many, among them many Hispanic Americans, their rightful place in American society.
May 1st, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Maybe Howard, if were up to me I’d treat these appointments like you many orchestras do, they have potential members audition behind screens because there is a very old stereotype amongst musicians that men play the violin and cello better then women. In order to put a stop to that practice many of the most symphonies have “blind” auditions. I would love to see merit and one’s ability be the primary qualification for any kind of position.
Unfortunately this is just not reality, this is politics. If you think issues like gender and race don’t play a factor you are deluding yourself, they obviously do.
Also, your analogy between Roosevelt and today’s situation is a false one. Roosevelt didn’t have to deal with rampart political correctness, he just had to pick people who would rule the way he wanted. Now judicial philosophy is just one component of that choice. No one thinks Sotoamayor isn’t qualified, but her race makes her “more qualified” then others, at least in the eyes of the PC crowd.
May 2nd, 2009 at 4:45 pm
I don’t know, are you deemed simply politically correct if you want to allocate a distribution of races as equal and primary to sit on your multiracial countries courts? The US Supreme court membership represents that 88 percent of the country is “so called” white. Its not any longer. Yet most of the people in prison are minorities, anyways. Its more than “well they do the crime” when its the majority(whites) that passes the laws and sentencing and runs the top half of the courts and the police dominating the rest of the people. Even given Sotoamayer’s potentials, you really don’t need some outstanding intellectual ability to be a Supreme Court justice as you need a sense of intellectual honesty, fair play, and horse sense and an ability to write cogently. Thats an IQ of 110 in someone brought up in a nurturing environment. You can read transcripts of the court deliberating and just shake your head at all that high priced highly intellectual talent barely distinguishing tomatoes from oranges and making barely common sense arguments, where politics overrides dominates their judgement. If you doubt me, just put in some time reading the transcripts and you will walk away shaking your head. So does it really matter this call for an extraordinary intellect, or do we just want one who is intellectually fair, as their decisions are so politically predetermined if you view the results of their findings you could just as well just put in a party man. Why this pretense that they are doing more than that? Personally they should be put in for term limits and rotated out to reflect the dynamism of our changing country and to keep it fresh. Back in the day the USA was legistlated to be an entity a 40 or 50 year old judge would not likely live beyond their 60′s, and now they live to their 80′s. They use to serve 10-20 years, a typical career period, now it can be 20-40 and in fast moving times. We change our presidents frequently(Thank God!) and congress too. So why do we use the law as the one unchecked branch of government to rule us? I think we should get beyond the stultified thinking on legal manners that is hamstringing us as a nation. I think this ties into our 2.4 million citizens in American prisons (in-country) and millions more on parole and probation. The system is too rigid and encrusted and ingrown and creaking under its own aging rafters to serve the citizens well no matter how much(huge) amounts of money we throw at it. If a candidate is truly intellectually gifted they should clearly see the problem which the current court just as clearly doesn’t. So “legal” intelligence alone doesn’t insure us a good pick relevant to our system-wide needs. It only reinforces the current stick in the mud status quo which really serves whom?
May 3rd, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Should we adopt a Lebanese style political system then Brian? Of course that system doesn’t really represent the true proportions that exist there.
In any event, the supreme court justice should stay in for life to reflect the solidity of the constitution, not the whims of the people. That is why they were given life terms by the framers.
Further, the justices don’t need huge IQs, but they must have a correct understanding of constitutional jurisprudence, which unfortunately is not the case with any of the folks that people are speculating will be picked by Obama.
Brian, may I recommend hitting enter every once in a while. That is how the english language works. It is how you divide up thoughts in coherent segments. It lets your reader know when you have shifted points. It creates a flow. It allows someone to remember where to pick back up if they have to look away from the text for a moment. It also just looks better. When people see a huge mass of letters with no paragraphs, they get lossed and/or intimidated.
May 3rd, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Sarcasm aside, I think its prudent to periodically bring in a new judicial regieme and think these lifetime jobs as SCOTUS judges are not a good idea. 10 year terms would not be a whim, but half an adult career(circa 1950′s) in one job as a judge.(plenty)From all the boilderplate copy circulating as news it appears obama will pick a fairly conventional centrist leaning judge. (Bear in mind to current republicans, a centrist is now deemed and extreme “liberal” and even as Megan says “we moderate repubs(should not be thrown away), but whatever your party is like in a vicious Night of the Long Knives mode. My paragraphs are re-rangeable for you creative types. I am trying to convey some freedom of possibilities and not just bridle path the horse down to the stream of flowing water over the bubbly brook. Its an anti-control freak ploy for those who seek an alternative. Conclusions brought to the fore so far are-Why do we give these life terms to our least transparent branch of government with so much life and death power over us? I don’t think obmaa is the problem frankly, its a little more profound than him. He is just an elected beaurocrat granted a short time in the executive suite and will be watched under a microscope. He
May 3rd, 2009 at 5:38 pm
By the way one of my housemates in college was the lebanese UN ambassadors son and he was a nice guy, very good with people politics, generous and easy to get along with with a great sense of humor. So I don’t get your criticism other than it being some unthoughtout boilerplate when he was the nicest easiest and most earnest person and liked all our highly divergent(even religious) backgrounds and had a great sense of live and let live. Look at how rancourous things are here, and I can say that aree
May 3rd, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Since its not a requirement that a candidate be a lawyer for SCOTUS (Imagine That!) why not nominate a lay person like Stephen Cobert say and let him serve 40 years as one of the SCOTUS9.
May 5th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Brian:
When I speak of the Lebanese political system, I do so because the comparison makes sense to our mode of picking SCOTUS justices. It is a “confessional” system.
“In political science terminology, confessionalism is a system of government that proportionally allocates political power among a country’s communities—whether religious or ethnic—according to their percentage of the population.”
http://www.usip.org/pubs/usipeace_briefings/2006/0330_lebanon_confessionalism.html
Lebanon’s political system requires that so many seats of parliament are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc., based proportionatley to population. Though, in reality it is based on the census from 60 or more years ago, that even then was questionable in its accuracy, particularly considering it was performed by the local Christians.
Now I will talk about paragraphs again. I have made a space because it has nothing to do with what I was speaking about before, and I want to let the reader know that so that they are not confused. You see Brian, reading text is different from having a verbal conversation because we do not have the benefit of body language. Paragraphs are a form of textual body language my friend. It doesn’t restrict my creativity, and I find that notion laughable.
With all due respect to you sir. You seem like a level headed person with a reasonably high level of intellegence.
May 9th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Sonia Sotomayor is an outstanding choice for the high court. She was one year behind me at Yale Law School and, even then, was recognized for her brilliance as well as for the “down to earth” quality of her personality. By no means whatsoever could it be said that her sole credential is her status as a Latina. That is rank racial profiling. This is a woman of great intellect, achievement and an outstanding vita. Yes, it will be a remarkable statement of inclusion for an Hispanic to finally reach the high court but, frankly, in Sonia’s case, it will be recognition of her dedication to the law above all else and an honor for all Americans to have someone of her caliber on the bench hopefully for many years to come.