New Supreme Court Pick - It's Sonia Sotomayor

The new Supreme Court pick will be Sonia Sotomayor. She's from the 2nd Court of Appeals and she will be the first Hispanic justice, if approved by the Senate.

Sonia Sotomayor graduated with a BA from Princeton University, summa cum laude, in 1976 and earned her JD from Yale Law School where she was the editor of the Yale Law Journal. Judge Sotomayor served as an Assistant DA in New York, was in private partner and was then nominated by President George H. Bush in 1991 to the District Court for the Southern District of New York. She took her seat in August of 1992.

In 1995, Judge Sotomayor effectively ended the baseball strike when she issued a preliminary injunction against the owners, preventing them from using replacement players. In another case, she issued an order allowing the Wall Street Journal to publish Vince Foster’s suicide note.

President Bill Clinton nominated Judge Sotomayor to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. The Senate blocked her nomination for over a year, but she was finally approved in 1998.

Interestingly, she threw out the firefighter case in New Haven that alleged reverse discrimination against white firefighters when New Haven threw out the exam because there are virtually no minority firefighters in New Haven. The Supreme Court has that case now and will be announcing their decision soon. My guess is that Judge Sotomayor’s decision will be reversed.

She is considerate a moderate liberal. Apparently, the conservatives are going to be gearing up for a fight. But I suspect, conservatives would have been unhappy with any pick.

She has had lifelong diabetes. Her parents are from Puerto Rico, an American territory.

Congratulations to Judge Sotomayor.