Sotomayor ’76 nominated to Supreme Court seat

Sonia Sotomayor ’76, the daughter of Puerto Rican parents who raised her in a Bronx housing project, was nominated Tuesday morning by President Obama to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court.

If confirmed, Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic justice and the third female justice in the court’s history. She would also join Justice Samuel Alito ’72 as the second Princetonian sitting on the court.

At an announcement in the East Room of the White House, Obama praised Sotomayor for her “rigorous intellect” and “the wisdom accumulated from having an aspiring life’s journey.”

“When Sonia Sotomayor ascends those marble steps to assume her seat on the highest court of the land,” Obama said during the announcement, “America will have taken another important step toward realizing the ideal that is etched above its entrance: Equal justice under the law.”

Sotomayor called the appointment the “most humbling honor of [her] life.”

“I chose to be a lawyer, and ultimately a judge, because I find endless challenge in the complexities of the law,” Sotomayor said. “I firmly believe in the rule of law as the foundation for all our basic rights.”

The 54-year-old Sotomayor currently serves on the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and also sits on the University Board of Trustees.

President Tilghman, who has worked with Sotomayor in her capacity as a trustee, said she is “someone who is decisive, who is going to listen hard to people who argue in front of her.”

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“She is going to question them very carefully and deliberately, and I think she is going to bring her extraordinary intellect to ... interpreting the Constitution as well,” she added.

Calling Sotomayor an “excellent choice,” Provost Christopher Eisgruber ’83, a Supreme Court scholar, said in an e-mail that he “expect[s] Judge Sotomayor will be a moderate liberal on the Court - not much different from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, or, for that matter, David Souter.”

As the perceived frontrunner for the nomination, Sotomayor drew a number of attacks from critics over the last few weeks. Her intellectual qualifications and judicial temperament were questioned in a May 4 article written by Jeffrey Rosen and published by The New Republic.

But Eisgruber predicted that, “absent some very surprising discovery, Judge Sotomayor will be confirmed [for the Supreme Court].” He noted, “It will be very hard for Republicans to oppose a judge whom they have confirmed not once but twice before, and who was originally nominated to the bench by a Republican president.”

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A bookish girl from the Bronx

Born in June 1954, Sotomayor was raised in a housing project near Yankee Stadium in the South Bronx. When she was 8, she was diagnosed with diabetes, and she lost her father a year later. Sotomayor’s mother raised her daughter and younger son on a nurse’s salary.

After graduating from a Catholic high school, Sotomayor came to Princeton, where she became known for her activism and studiousness.

As a senior concentrating in history, Sotomayor wrote a 180-page thesis on the impact of Luis Munoz Marin, the first democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico.

In August 1976, she married Kevin Noonan GS ’81, but the couple did not have children and divorced in October 1983. Noonan declined to comment for this article.

After graduating summa cum laude from the University in 1976, Sotomayor attended the Yale Law School, where she was editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Sotomayor was nominated in November 1991 by former president George H.W. Bush to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and confirmed nine months later. Only 38, she became the youngest judge in the district and the state's first Hispanic federal judge. In June 1997, former president Bill Clinton nominated Sotomayor for her current seat on the Second Circuit, and she was confirmed in October 1998.

Throughout her ascent in the judicial world, Sotomayor has remained close to Princeton, receiving an honorary doctor of laws degree in 2001 and becoming a trustee in 2006.

If confirmed, Sotomayor would be the 11th Princetonian ever to serve on the court. The 10th, Alito, was nominated by former president George W. Bush in October 2005 and was confirmed three months later.