Judge Sotomajor
This morning at 11:00 am ET Judge Sonia Sotomayor is being sworn in as the first Hispanic in history to wear the robes of a Supreme Court Justice.
Judge Sotomayor was born to a Puerto Rican family and grew up in the South Bronx and arguably has lived the American dream. Her father, a factory worked with a third grade education, died when she was 9 and she was raised by her mother who also worked as a nurse.
When her father died Judge Sotomayor turned to the comfort of books and it was her reading of the Nancy Drew mystery series that first captured her attention for the law.
She graduated as valedictorian from high school and won a scholarship to Princeton where she continued to excel and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She also won the top academic award at Princeton. At law school at Yale she served as editor of the Yale Law Journal and as managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order.
Judge Sotomayor also has the very popular reputation for “saving baseball” in 1995 ending the long strike by voting in favor of the players against the owners.
Her career is a notable one without blemish and apart from the unfortunate remark of saying that a Latina women would probably make a better judgment than a white male.
This swearing in is another history making event in the already historic election of the first black President – Barack Obama.
She will be first sworn in at the Supreme Court by Justice John Roberts and then there will be another swearing ceremony at the White House.
Although the vetting process was vigorous and sometimes heated it was always respectful and Judge Sotomayor underwent all of the questions with a broken foot raised on a footstool under the desk. She handled herself with dignity and calm and a notable lack of evasion.
Hispanics around the world are extremely proud of Judge Sotomajor and are celebrating the fact that she is only the third woman on the Supreme Court and the first Latina woman to take this oath. Latina women feel that they can now stand on the shoulders of Sonia Sotomayor and anything is now possible for them and their daughters.