Supreme Court Nominee Sonia Sotomayor in Her Own Words

Todd Thurman /

Washington, D.C. - May 26, 2009 -- Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Federal Appeals Court , center, makes remarks after United States President Barack Obama, right, named her as his nominee for Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in the East Room of the White House on Tuesday, May 26, 2009. She will replace retiring Justice David Souter. Judge Sotomayor, 54, of The Bronx, New York, will be the first Hispanic to serve if her nomination is approved by the U.S. Senate. Vice President Joseph Biden looks on from the left.

Issues Facing Latino Judiciary symposium sponsored by the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, October 2001:

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.

Yet, because I accept the proposition that, as Judge Resnik describes it, “to judge is an exercise of power” and because as, another former law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, states “there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives—no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging,” I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that—it’s an aspiration (more…)

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