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
When everyone at school is speaking one language, and a lot of your classmates' parents also speak it, and you go home and see that your community is different -there is a sense of shame attached to that. It really takes growing up to treasure the specialness of being different.
The dynamism of any diverse community depends not only on the diversity itself but on promoting a sense of belonging among those who formerly would have been considered and felt themselves outsiders.
The truth is that since childhood I had cultivated an existential independence. It came from perceiving the adults around me as unreliable, and without it I felt I wouldn't have survived. I cared deeply for everyone in my family, but in the end I depended on myself.
I am an ordinary person who has been blessed with extraordinary opportunities and experiences. Today is one of those experiences.
I'm young at heart. I'm young in spirit, and I'm still adventurous.
I'm a New Yorker, and I jaywalk with the best of them.
This wealth of experiences, personal and professional, have helped me appreciate the variety of perspectives that present themselves in every case that I hear.
I have never, ever focused on the negative of things. I always look at the positive.
I think that even someone who got into an institution through affirmative action could prove they were qualified by what they accomplished there.
In my experience when a friend unloaded about a boyfriend or spouse, the listener soaked up the complaint and remembered it long after the speaker had forgiven the offense.
I was raised in a Bronx public housing project, but studied at two of the nation's finest universities. I did work as an assistant district attorney, prosecuting violent crimes that devastate our communities.
It is very important when you judge to recognize that you have to stay impartial. That's what the nature of my job is. I have to unhook myself from my emotional responses and try to stay within my unemotional, objective persona.
It's not the heart that compels conclusions in cases, it's the law.
You can't dream unless you know what the possibilities are.