With his emphasis on the personal side of a judge's experience, President Barack Obama made much of Sonia Sotomayor's biography in his nomination speech Tuesday -- and can be expected to do so in the weeks ahead as well.
Much of the story is undoubtedly compelling. Judge Sotomayor, 54 years old, grew up in a poor family in the Bronx borough of New York. The daughter of Puerto Rican parents, she would be the first Hispanic on the court.
When Judge Sotomayor was 3, her family moved into the Bronxdale Houses, a public-housing complex with nearly 1,500 units today, a few miles from Yankee Stadium and right by a major expressway. At 8, she was diagnosed with diabetes. A year later, her father, a tool-and-die maker, died. Her mother, Celina Sotomayor, a nurse, raised her and her brother, Juan.
After graduating in 1972 from Cardinal Spellman High School, a Catholic institution in the Bronx, Ms. Sotomayor went to Princeton University on a scholarship, then Yale Law School.
At Princeton, Ms. Sotomayor was influenced by her Puerto Rican roots. A history major, she was one of a handful of students who created a study seminar on the history and politics of Puerto Rico, telling officials they felt the subject wasn't being addressed by existing courses.
Her 1976 senior thesis was titled, "La Historia Ciclica de Puerto Rico: The Impact of the Life of Luis Munoz Marin on the Economic History of Puerto Rico, 1930-1975." She won the university's Pyne Prize, the highest general honor conferred on an undergraduate, according to school officials.
Judge Sotomayor worked as an assistant district attorney for five years after law school, then at the New York law firm Pavia & Harcourt, where she focused on intellectual-property issues and worked with several corporate clients.
The peak of her career there came representing the Fendi brand, now owned by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, on trademark actions, according to George Pavia, the firm's managing partner. By the mid-1980s, he says, the firm had accumulated thousands of illegal knockoffs of purses, shoes and other items through seizures, and was seeking a way to show that the Fendi brand name was being protected.
With Judge Sotomayor in charge, the firm decided to stage a large bonfire at Tavern on the Green restaurant. Refused a permit by fire officials, they instead called the media to witness a mass crushing of items in garbage trucks, an event called "the Fendi crush."
It was the pinnacle of our achievement, and Sonia was the principal doer," Mr. Pavia says.
Backed by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, she was named to the federal bench in the Southern District of New York in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush, then to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals by President Bill Clinton in 1998.
Divorced, with no children, Ms. Sotomayor would be the sixth Roman Catholic on the nine-member Court.
from the wall-street journal
Much of the story is undoubtedly compelling. Judge Sotomayor, 54 years old, grew up in a poor family in the Bronx borough of New York. The daughter of Puerto Rican parents, she would be the first Hispanic on the court.
When Judge Sotomayor was 3, her family moved into the Bronxdale Houses, a public-housing complex with nearly 1,500 units today, a few miles from Yankee Stadium and right by a major expressway. At 8, she was diagnosed with diabetes. A year later, her father, a tool-and-die maker, died. Her mother, Celina Sotomayor, a nurse, raised her and her brother, Juan.
After graduating in 1972 from Cardinal Spellman High School, a Catholic institution in the Bronx, Ms. Sotomayor went to Princeton University on a scholarship, then Yale Law School.
At Princeton, Ms. Sotomayor was influenced by her Puerto Rican roots. A history major, she was one of a handful of students who created a study seminar on the history and politics of Puerto Rico, telling officials they felt the subject wasn't being addressed by existing courses.
Her 1976 senior thesis was titled, "La Historia Ciclica de Puerto Rico: The Impact of the Life of Luis Munoz Marin on the Economic History of Puerto Rico, 1930-1975." She won the university's Pyne Prize, the highest general honor conferred on an undergraduate, according to school officials.
Judge Sotomayor worked as an assistant district attorney for five years after law school, then at the New York law firm Pavia & Harcourt, where she focused on intellectual-property issues and worked with several corporate clients.
The peak of her career there came representing the Fendi brand, now owned by LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, on trademark actions, according to George Pavia, the firm's managing partner. By the mid-1980s, he says, the firm had accumulated thousands of illegal knockoffs of purses, shoes and other items through seizures, and was seeking a way to show that the Fendi brand name was being protected.
With Judge Sotomayor in charge, the firm decided to stage a large bonfire at Tavern on the Green restaurant. Refused a permit by fire officials, they instead called the media to witness a mass crushing of items in garbage trucks, an event called "the Fendi crush."
It was the pinnacle of our achievement, and Sonia was the principal doer," Mr. Pavia says.
Backed by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, she was named to the federal bench in the Southern District of New York in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush, then to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals by President Bill Clinton in 1998.
Divorced, with no children, Ms. Sotomayor would be the sixth Roman Catholic on the nine-member Court.
from the wall-street journal
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