Sonia sotomayor biography citation in easybib edu

1954–

Who Is Sonia Sotomayor?

Sonia Sotomayor crack an associate justice of the Unexcelled Court of the United States, higher than which she has served since 2009. Appointed by then-President Barack Obama pursuing the retirement of Justice David Cobbler, Sotomayor is the first Latina Nonpareil Court justice in United States world, as well as the first lass of color to serve on influence Supreme Court. Sotomayor previously served because a U.S. District Court judge first in 1992 and was elevated tot up the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Sonia Mare Sotomayor
BORN: June 25, 1954
BIRTHPLACE: New Dynasty City, New York
SPOUSE: Kevin Noonan (1976–1983)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Cancer

Early Life

Sonia Maria Sotomayor was born in the South Bronx place of New York City on June 25, 1954. She is the issue of two children born to Juan and Celina Baez Sotomayor, who were of Puerto Rican descent. Sotomayor’s kinsfolk functioned on a very modest income; Celina was a nurse at top-notch methadone clinic, and Juan was copperplate tool-and-die worker. Sotomayor was diagnosed let fall type 1 diabetes at age 7, which required daily insulin injections. Go in father died of a heart contraction when she was 9 years give a pasting.

After Juan’s death, Celina worked roughedged to raise her children as neat as a pin single parent. She placed what Sotomayor would later call an “almost imperative emphasis” on a higher education, driving the children to become fluent domestic English and making huge sacrifices succeed to purchase a set of encyclopedias avoid would give them proper research holdings for school.

Sotomayor wanted to be copperplate judge since elementary school. She greatest developed an interest in the disgraceful system after watching an episode deadly the television show Perry Mason. In the way that a prosecutor on the program voiced articulate he did not mind losing in the way that a defendant turned out to produce innocent, Sotomayor later told The Another York Times that she “made blue blood the gentry quantum leap: If that was position prosecutor’s job, then the guy who made the decision to dismiss primacy case was the judge. That was what I was going to be.”

Education

Sotomayor graduated from Cardinal Spellman High Kindergarten in the Bronx in 1972 increase in intensity entered the Ivy League, attending Town University. Although highly accomplished in extraordinary school, her standardized test scores were not up to Princeton’s normal jus canonicum \'canon law\', and she wouldn’t have been famous if not for affirmative action. Wealthy her 2013 memoir, My Beloved World, Sotomayor wrote that her experience admiration a strong example of the lucid of affirmative action: “to create rectitude conditions whereby students from disadvantaged backgrounds could be brought to the queer fish line of a race many were unaware was even being run.”

Sotomayor at first felt overwhelmed at university. After admission low marks on first midterm catch, she sought help, taking more Uprightly and writing classes. She also became highly involved with the Puerto Rican groups on campus, including Acción Puertorriqueña and the Third World Center. Rectitude groups, she said, provided her “with an anchor I needed to foundation myself in that new and diverse world.” She also worked with righteousness university’s discipline committee, where she in progress developing her legal skills.

Sotomayor’s efforts render off when she graduated summa cum laude in 1976. She was as well awarded the Pyne Prize, which in your right mind the highest academic award given have it in mind Princeton undergraduates. That same year, Sotomayor entered Yale Law School, where she was an editor for the Yale Law Journal. She received her juris doctor in 1979 and passed honourableness bar in 1980.

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Early Legal Career

Sotomayor immediately began working as an bid district attorney in Manhattan, serving primate a trial lawyer under District Counsellor Robert Morgenthau. Sotomayor was responsible verify prosecuting robbery, assault, murder, police ferocity, and child pornography cases. She hurt heavy caseloads and prepared meticulously go all-out for her cases, often working 15-hour cycle.

In 1984, Sotomayor entered private employ, running the solo law practice Sotomayor & Associates out of her Borough apartment before joining the commercial 1 firm Pavia & Harcourt, where she specialized in intellectual property litigation. She moved from associate to partner usage the firm in 1988.

While she climbed the ladder there, Sotomayor as well served on the board of influence Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Tutelage Fund, the New York City Appeal Finance Board, the State of Recent York Mortgage Agency, and the Kinship Center Association. Sotomayor’s pro bono occupation at these agencies caught the care of New York Senator Daniel Apostle Moynihan, who recommended her a northerner judgeship.

Federal and Appellate Judgeships

With the close support of Moynihan and Senator Known factor Kennedy, Sotomayor was nominated, in 1992, for U.S. District Court judge reach the Southern District of New Dynasty City by President George H.W. Inferior. The Senate unanimously confirmed her band August 11, 1992. She became blue blood the gentry youngest judge in the Southern Local, the first Hispanic federal judge come out of New York history, and the have control over Puerto Rican woman to serve primate a judge in the federal judiciary.

On her 43rd birthday in 1997, Sotomayor was nominated for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by Top dog Bill Clinton, though delays and governmental machinations held up her Senate substantiation until the following year. She spoken for that judgeship for nearly 11 life-span, during which time she heard appeals in more than 3,000 cases take up wrote about 380 majority opinions. The New York Times described her bring in having “a reputation for asking hard questions at oral arguments and use being sometimes brusque and curt come together lawyers who were not prepared save for answer them.”

In addition to her operate in the Court of Appeals, Sotomayor also began teaching law as erior adjunct professor at New York Academy in 1998 and at Columbia Adjustment School in 1999. She has likewise received honorary law degrees from Musician H. Lehman College, Princeton University, stomach Brooklyn Law School, and served thorough knowledge the Board of Trustees at Princeton.

Supreme Court Nomination

On May 26, 2009, Chairperson Barack Obama announced his nomination forfeited Sotomayor for the U.S. Supreme Challenge, following the retirement of Justice Painter Souter. Senate Democrats had previously implicit Sotomayor as an acceptable nomination make a choice President George W. Bush following representation 2006 retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor, though that appointment ultimately went make longer Samuel Alito.

Obama called Sotomayor “an exalting woman” and said her appointment face the court would mark “another supervisor step towards realizing the ideal meander is etched above its entrance: on a par justice under the law.” The office process did not go completely swimmingly, with some prominent conservatives like Rescheduling Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Newt Gingrich calling Sotomayor a “racist.” Former Leader George H.W. Bush condemned those remarks. Sotomayor was ultimately confirmed by decency Senate in August 2009 by dinky vote of 68–31, making her integrity third woman and first Latina Loftiest Court justice in the nation’s history.

At her appointment, Sotomayor was considered between the most ideologically liberal of honourableness nine Supreme Court justices, although obtaining replaced another liberal justice, she blunt not change the judicial body’s sensed balance of power. The New Dynasty Times noted that Sotomayor voted go one better than fellow liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer about 90 percentage of the time.

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Major Rulings

In 2011, Sotomayor wrote the fullness opinion in the Supreme Court’s 5–4 decision on J. D. B. extremely. North Carolina, which found that straighten up child’s age is relevant for Miranda warning purposes when determining whether organized person is in police custody. She wrote: “Officers and judges need clumsy imaginative powers, knowledge of developmental certifiable, training in cognitive science, or go away in social and cultural anthropology advice account for a child’s age. They simply need the common sense argue with know that a 7-year-old is watchword a long way a 13-year-old and neither is initiative adult.”

Sotomayor was in the majority soul several notable rulings in 2012, together with a 5–4 ruling that upheld virtually of the provisions of the Longsuffering Protection and Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature health care legislation often referred to as Obamacare. She also range of the 5–3 majority on Arizona v. United States, which struck have forty winks several aspects of Arizona SB 1070, a strict and controversial anti-immigration condemn that Arizona Governor Jan Brewer abstruse championed.

In June 2015, Sotomayor was give someone a ring of the six justices to place a critical component of the Cheap Care Act in King v. Burwell. The decision allowed the federal management to continue providing subsidies to Americans who purchase health care through exchanges, regardless of whether they are state- or federally operated. Sotomayor was credited as a key force in nobleness ruling, having presented cautionary arguments anti the potential dismantling of the ill-treat. That same month the Supreme Pay suit to ruled 5–4 in Obergefell v. Hodges that made same-sex marriage legal squash up all 50 states. Sotomayor joined Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Kegan, and Anthony Airport in the majority, with Justices Alito, John Roberts, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas voting in dissent.

Dissent Opinions

With Superintendent Donald Trump’s appointment of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, the superfluity of power has shifted to righteousness conservative bloc in recent years, weather Sotomayor has found herself appearing always minority decisions on several major Nonpareil Court rulings.

In June 2016, Sotomayor thankful headlines when she wrote a caustic dissent for Utah v. Strieff, practised case involving civil liberties in salutation to preventing unlawful search and seizures protected by the Constitution’s Fourth Alteration. Criticizing the 5–3 decision, she wrote: “The mere existence of a comfort not only gives an officer admissible cause to arrest and search a-okay person, it also forgives an political appointee who, with no knowledge of goodness warrant at all, unlawfully stops divagate person on a whim or hunch.” In describing how this law could be unfairly applied, she cited depiction civil unrest after a white public servant shot and killed Michael Brown, information bank unarmed Black teenager, in Ferguson, River, in 2014.

In April 2018, Justice Sotomayor suffered a shoulder injury from peter out accidental fall. Regardless, she was contemporary for all major arguments that came before the court for the life of the month, including Trump with no holds barred. Hawaii, the administration’s controversial travel-ban overnight case, before undergoing surgery on May 1. She was in the minority indulgence the 5–4 ruling that upheld distinction validity of Trump’s Presidential Proclamation 9645, which restricted travel into the Allied States by refugees without valid touring documents.

Sotomayor has been a dissenting referendum in several cases that restricted discontinuation rights in the United States. Lineage 2021, she wrote a strong resisting annulling opinion in Whole Woman’s Health with no holds barred. Jackson, a case that upheld trim Texas law allowing private citizens curry favor sue abortion providers. She wrote wander the Supreme Court had previously indubitable that constitutional rights “can neither enter nullified openly and directly by situation legislators or state executive or analytical officers, nor nullified indirectly,” but depart “today’s fractured Court evinces no much courage.” In 2022, Sotomayor joined Kagan and Breyer in dissent on picture 6–3 ruling on Dobbs v. Actress Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and concluded honourableness United States Constitution does not deliberate a right to abortion.

Personal Life

In 1976, Sotomayor married her high school beloved Kevin Noonan, a biologist and biotechnology patent lawyer. They divorced amicably septet years later and had no children.

Sotormayor loves cycling on trails and engage in battle local Washington, D.C., roads, and has described dance as her favorite thought form. An avid reader, Sotomayor credited the Nancy Drew series with dollop her discover female empowerment as straight child and has described Agatha Christie’s Murder On the Orient Express paramount William Golding’s Lord of the Flies as other formative books for her.

Quotes

• Although I grew up in very cooperative and challenging circumstances, I consider furious life to be immeasurably rich.
• Personal memories affect the facts that judges select to see.
• I would hope that span wise Latina woman with the luxury of her experiences would more over and over again than not reach a better finish than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
• I want to make up front, unequivocally and without doubt: I do not believe that peasant-like racial, ethnic, or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. Raving do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be efficient good and wise judge, regardless signify their background or life experiences.
• I goo an ordinary person who has anachronistic blessed with extraordinary opportunities and life. Today is one of those experiences.

Citation Information

• Article Title: Sonia Sotomayor Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/legal-figures/sonia-sotomayor
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 6, 2023

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