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Judge Sonia Sotomayor for The Supreme Court
Obama is making moves…yet again and this one is sure to make history, especially within the hispanic community. It looks like Mr. President is ready to appoint Sonia Sotomayor to replace Justice David Souter once he retires. Here’s how the NY Daily News is reporting it.
Late Thursday, news broke that Justice David Souter plans to retire when the court session ends in June, giving Obama his first chance to name a judge.
There’s a groundswell of pressure on him to name a woman and possibly a minority, so Sotomayor, 54, and her storied journey from the Bronx could be a compelling choice for the first African-American commander in chief.
In an interview with the Daily News in 1998, Sotomayor said she long believed she would rise to the top of her profession.
“I was going to college and I was going to become an attorney, and I knew that when I was 10,” Sotomayor said. “Ten. That’s no jest.”
A year later, she entered private practice, and she became partner within three years.
As a child, Sotomayor became enamored with Nancy Drew stories and wanted to be an investigative detective like the female heroine of those popular childhood mystery books. At age 8, she was diagnosed with diabetes and was told detective work wasn’t in the cards.
“I became very disappointed about not having a life plan,” she told The News. “At the time, ‘Perry Mason’ had become a very popular show, and I loved Perry Mason. If I couldn’t do detective work as a police officer, I could do it as a lawyer.”
Sotomayor, the daughter of Puerto Rican parents, then set out to fulfill her dreams in the legal world.
She enrolled at Princeton University, an experience she described as the “single most growing event of my life” and graduated summa cum laude in 1976. She earned her law degree at Yale, where she was editor of the law journal.
Sotomayor began her post-college career as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, working for legendary top prosecutor Robert Morgenthau.
Her job soon became her life. In 1983, she divorced her husband, whom she married while a student at Princeton. The couple never had children.
Sounds like another very highly motivated individual. No wonder why Obama has her in the running.
