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
I think it's important to move people beyond just dreaming into doing. They have to be able to see that you are just like them, and you made it.
It is important for all of us to appreciate where we come from and how that history has really shaped us in ways that we might not understand.
Sometimes it gets boring. No justice is supposed to say that. But, you know, there's drudgery in every job you're going to do.
To have a romance, you have to have time. I'm a justice. I've written a book. The guy's gonna have to wait until I'm a little bit freer.
I found in my experiences that it's not that men are consciously discriminating against promoting women, but I do believe as people we have self-images about what's good.
I hope that as the Senate and American people learn more about me, they will see that I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences.
I don't prejudge issues. I come to every case with an open mind. Every case is new to me.
I think that the day a justice forgets that each decision comes at a cost to someone, then I think you start losing your humanity.
A career is something that you train for and prepare for and plan on doing for a long time.
With my academic achievement in high school, I was accepted rather readily at Princeton and equally as fast at Yale, but my test scores were not comparable to that of my classmates. And that's been shown by statistics, there are reasons for that.
I am a New Yorker, and 7:00 A.M. is a civilized hour to finish the day, not to start it.
As you may know from my life story, my cousin who was my soul mate went to a public school. And he died of AIDS. Would I and my brother have been able to resist the lure of drugs in the surrounding schools? Who knows.
As a Catholic, you can have two views on capital punishment. You can think, let Caesar do what Caesar needs to do, and the law says you can impose capital punishment, so you impose it. You can [also] be a Catholic who says we can't kill, we can't kill babies and we can't kill adults. If you let a decision be driven by your personal views, then you are not doing what a judge needs to do, which is enforce the laws of the society that you are in. But you can control your own behavior, and that is the choice that the church and God gives us - what kind of people are we going to be.
To the extent that the parents who send their children to these [Catholic] schools are parents like my own, who actually have faith in the church. Faith that it will provide their children with safety, a decent education and values about life and others. This is an institution that stands for all good in the world.