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JUNE 25, 2009. MICHAEL JACKSON DIES AT THE AGE OF 50.

Michael Jackson’s brand of pop knew no borders and needed no translation, linking listeners around the world through the accessible corridors of rhythm, beat and dance. And as reaction to his sudden death began to pour in Friday, its extent underscored how far his influence had spread.

From Sydney to Hong Kong, China to Los Angeles, fans, officials and fellow entertainers spoke of their shock and sadness. His music echoed from cafes and car speakers, and everyone from national leaders on down seemed to weigh in.

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela called the star’s death “lamentable news,” though he criticized the media for giving it so much attention. The former president of South Korea Kim Dae-jung, who had met Mr. Jackson, said: “We lost a hero of the world.”

In Paris, fans held a ceremony in his honor in front of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame Friday night and planned a memorial moonwalk at the Eiffel Tower for Sunday.

Huge crowds gathered in the shadow of Notre-Dame, linking hands and chanting Mr. Jackson’s name, cheering and sometimes breaking into song. Some held flags adorned with images of Mr. Jackson, and others held up signs.

Charles Dali, an 18-year-old student in the city, too young to remember Mr. Jackson in his recording heyday, nevertheless said that for him, “The Prince of Pop will forever be an icon and a true genius.”

Isidorae Costade, a 35-year-old lawyer from Paris, said: “He was the first musical artist to truly go beyond race. For this reason he means a great deal to the French.”

Fans lighted candles at an spontaneous gathering in Hong Kong, while in the Philippines, a dance tribute was planned for a prison in Cebu, where Byron Garcia, a security consultant, had 1,500 inmates join in a synchronized dance to the “Thriller” video.

“My heart is heavy because my idol died,” he said.

“Growing up in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, music was Michael Jackson,” wrote Kofi Agadzi from Vakpo, Ghana, in a comment on The New York Times Web site. “We will miss you.”

The former Philippine first lady, Imelda Marcos, said she cried on hearing the news.

“Michael Jackson enriched our lives, made us happy,” she said in a statement. “The accusations, the persecution caused him so much financial and mental anguish. He was vindicated in court, but the battle took his life. There is probably a lesson here for all of us.”

Quincy Jones, who worked closely with Mr. Jackson on some of his most successful recordings, led tributes from the music world.

“I am absolutely devastated at this tragic and unexpected news,” he said of one of the first black entertainers of the MTV generation to gain a big crossover following.

Paul McCartney told Reuters: “It’s so sad and shocking. I feel privileged to have hung out and worked with Michael. He was a massively talented boy man with a gentle soul. His music will be remembered forever.”

The film directors Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg also paid tribute. Mr. Scorsese told MTV.com: “Michael Jackson was extraordinary. When we worked together on ‘Bad,’ I was in awe of his absolute mastery of movement on the one hand, and of the music on the other. Every step he took was absolutely precise and fluid at the same time. It was like watching quicksilver in motion.

“He was wonderful to work with, an absolute professional at all times, and — it really goes without saying — a true artist. It will be a while before I can get used to the idea that he’s no longer with us.”

Mr. Spielberg told Entertainment Weekly: “Just as there will never be another Fred Astaire or Chuck Berry or Elvis Presley, there will never be anyone comparable to Michael Jackson. His talent, his wonderment and his mystery make him legend.”

The singer Celine Dion said in a statement, “I am shocked. I am overwhelmed by this tragedy. Michael Jackson has been an idol for me all my life.”

Mr. Jackson had been scheduled to begin a comeback tour in London next month, and fans there gathered to mourn. Ben Bradshaw, the British culture secretary, issued a statement to announce his grief in which he said he was “a long-time fan of Michael Jackson and had ‘Billie Jean’ played as the first dance at his civil partnership,” The Guardian reported.

Fans in London danced and sang to Mr. Jackson’s greatest hits Friday night. At Glastonbury, where hundreds were camping in the fields for the annual rock festival in the southwest of England, the news of Mr. Jackson’s death spread quickly and people began sporadically playing his songs at food stalls and in tents. Some bands played tributes to the singer.

The producers and cast of “Thriller — Live,” a tribute show about Mr. Jackson’s life currently in London’s West End, said they had decided to go ahead with Friday’s performance.

In Italy, Friday’s papers carried front-page tributes to the “King of Pop.” La Repubblica called the trajectory of Mr. Jackson’s life “a fairy tale that turned into a nightmare.” Readers sent in notes of thanks, grief and disbelief to the Web site of the newspaper Corriere della Sera.

“Thank you for the emotions you conveyed,” wrote one reader. Another added, “This splendid lonely angel, I love you.”

“The brightest star ever in music history has fallen, leaving the fascinating memory in peoples’ minds,” Yi Quan wrote from Beijing on the Times’s Web site. “Michael, because of you, I am not alone.”

YOUR LIFE, IS WHAT YOUR THOUGHTS MAKE IT.

Your life, is what your thoughts make it.

MAHATMA GHANDI, ON LIFE.

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

KIM JONG-UN, SON OF KIM JONG-IL, SET TO INHERIT NORTH KOREA

North Korea’s Heir Apparent Remains a Mystery

SEOUL, South Korea — There is only one photograph available outside North Korea thought to be that of the man South Korean officials believe will inherit the world’s most unpredictable regime, one that is armed with nuclear weapons. In that picture, the man, Kim Jong-un, a son of the ailing North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, is an 11-year-old.

Kenji Fujimoto, via Reuters
There is only one photograph available outside North Korea of Kim Jong-un; it is of him as an 11-year-old with a bratty grin.
Related

Times Topics: Kim Jong-un

“When Prince Jong-un shook hands with me, he fixed me with a vicious look,” Kim Jong-il’s former Japanese sushi chef wrote in a 2003 memoir describing his first encounter with the boy, then 7, dressed in a military uniform and known as a “prince” among his father’s aides. “I still cannot forget the look in his eyes. It seemed to say, ‘This is a despicable Japanese.’ ”

The chef, who goes by the pen name Kenji Fujimoto, said in an interview that as a teenager, Kim Jong-un was already his father’s favorite and “looked just like him.”

The lone photo and Mr. Fujimoto’s memories form part of the few precious strands of information analysts and intelligence officials in South Korea and Washington rely on as they struggle to put together a dossier on Kim Jong-un, the youngest and least-known of Kim Jong-il’s three sons.

They describe Kim Jong-un as a man in his mid-20s, of medium height, overweight and prone to high blood pressure and suffering from diabetes, and with character traits similar to his father’s.

“We picture a charismatic young man, authoritarian, politically astute and precocious and ambitious,” said Cheong Seong-chang, a researcher at the Sejong Institute, near Seoul. “We picture Little Kim Jong-il.”

The question of who will succeed Kim Jong-il has grown in importance since he was reported to have suffered a stroke in August. Last week, South Korean news reports, lawmakers and analysts who have access to intelligence assessments said that Mr. Kim, 67, had decided to hand over the reins to Kim Jong-un while North Korean generals, ruling party officials and diplomats abroad were all pledging fealty to the son.

But the walls of secrecy that surround North Korean leaders make the guessing about who is in and who is out in the succession game notoriously difficult. Indeed, the dearth of information about Kim Jong-un speaks volumes about how little the world knows about North Korea itself.

Intelligence officials acknowledge that much of what they have gleaned is little more than conjecture, based on secondhand information from sources inside North Korea but not independently verified.

The North Korean media have never shown images of Kim Jong-un in public or mentioned him by name, said Kim Sang-kook, a senior North Korea analyst at the Unification Ministry in Seoul.

Until Mr. Fujimoto released the photo to the South Korean television network KBS in February, there had been no picture at all of the son. The chef said he was given the picture shortly before he fled to Japan in 2001. Mr. Fujimoto and most analysts say the son was born on Jan. 8, 1983, but others insist that he was born in 1984.

Kim Jong-il apprenticed at important party and military posts for more than 20 years before officially assuming power after the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994. He appeared with his father in mass gatherings, and his photos decorated the walls of government buildings beside his father’s. No such early grooming has been reported for Kim Jong-un.

Now, Kim Jong-il’s failing health is compelling Mr. Kim to begin a crash program to present his son as the next leader. But installing an untested young man at the top of a belligerent regime where septuagenarian veterans of political machinations jockey for power raises many questions.

“We know almost nothing about the young man,” said Andrei Lankov, a Russian-born North Korea specialist at Kookmin University in Seoul. “Very young, without any administrative experience to speak of, and without his own coterie — he had not had time to create a power base. He will be an obedient puppet in the hands of people who lobbied for this decision. Who are these people? I have no idea, to be frank.”

The power elite will support another hereditary succession, to keep the peace, some analysts say. But “whoever the new leader is, it will be a collective leadership in name or actuality,” said Bruce Klingner at the Heritage Foundation, who has worked as a Korea analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Kim Jong-il had at least five children with three women. Sung Hae-rim, a movie star, gave birth to Kim Jong-nam, now 38. She became estranged from Kim Jong-il after he married Kim Young-sook, who gave birth to one daughter (some say two) but no son.

Then Mr. Kim fell for Ko Young-hee, the prima donna of North Korea’s premier opera, who was born in Japan and emigrated to the North in the 1960s. She had two sons — Kim Jong-chol, now 28, and Kim Jong-un — and a daughter, Kim Yeo-jong, 22. Until Ms. Ko died of breast cancer in 2004, she was Mr. Kim’s de facto first lady and a fierce campaigner for her sons.

With no mother to promote him to his father, Kim Jong-nam scuttled what remote chance he had of succession when he was caught and deported while sneaking into Japan on a fake passport in 2001. He was headed for Tokyo Disneyland.

The middle son, Kim Jong-chol, attended the International School of Berne in Switzerland in the 1990s under the pseudonym Pak Chol, according to analysts and journalists in Seoul, as well as Mr. Fujimoto — though other analysts dispute these accounts. He was said to be a fan of Michael Jordan, Eric Clapton and Keanu Reeves. Mr. Fujimoto wrote that Ms. Ko often took her sons on trips to Europe and Tokyo Disneyland, and that Kim Jong-un learned English.

Analysts are divided over whether Kim Jong-un also attended the school in Switzerland. They say he was enrolled from 2002 to 2007 in the Kim Il-sung Military University, a leading officer-training school in Pyongyang, the capital, but was taught at home. The son, these accounts say, is about 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs more than 200 pounds.

Mr. Fujimoto said in an interview that the young man he last saw in 2001 was stocky and athletic but not fat. He said Kim Jong-il dismissed Kim Jong-chol as “girlish” but openly complimented Kim Jong-un, saying, “That boy is like me.”

The sons lived a life few North Koreans could imagine: swimming pools, water fountains, bowling alleys, billiard rooms, inline skating tracks, a beach, Jet Skis and horses.

An episode relayed by Mr. Fujimoto and often cited by analysts to illustrate Kim Jong-un’s sequestered existence, if not his leadership qualities, took place several years ago when the chef and Kim Jong-un were smoking a cigarette in a car. Mr. Kim, then 18, looked into the distance and, according to the chef’s account, said: “We are here, playing basketball, riding horses, riding Jet Skis, having fun together. But what of the lives of the average people?”

L.A. LAKERS DEFEAT THE ORLANDO MAGIC TO WIN THE 2009 CHAMPIONSHIP.

ORLANDO, Fla. — Again, Kobe Bryant had his hands full. When he finally shed himself of Orlando Magic defenders, he fittingly cupped two trophies. In one arm, he held the N.B.A.’s championship trophy.

It was the merging of two worlds for Bryant, a fusion of team unity and his Ahab-like obsession with earning his fourth championship ring.

The dogged and almost maniacal twin pursuits ended Sunday. The Lakers found their destination, their 15th N.B.A. championship, after a meandering route. When the final buzzer sounded, they stood with a 99-86 series-clinching victory in Game 5 against the Magic, whose season-long resilience was lost amid Bryant’s efficiency.

With 30 points Sunday, Bryant secured his first finals Most Valuable Player award. The ear-splitting chants of “Beat L.A.” early in the game at Amway Arena were replaced by choruses of “M.V.P.” as Bryant marched to the free-throw line late in the game.

The Champagne-drenched evening ended a seven-year championship drought in which speed bumps had turned into mountains for the Lakers. In the stretch between titles, the Lakers had become burdened by soap-opera story lines: from the trade of Shaquille O’Neal to the retirement and rehiring of Coach Phil Jackson to the disappointing showing in last season’s finals against the Boston Celtics.

Jackson now has 10 titles — 6 from his tenure with the Chicago Bulls and 4 with the Lakers — to surpass the legendary Celtics patriarch Red Auerbach. The titles were flanked by disappointment, and Jackson’s scalp now shows more salt and less pepper, the accumulation of layered trials before another triumph.

Jackson’s hair was covered after the win Sunday by a gold cap, with the Roman numeral X on it. He called the moment “surreal.”

“I wasn’t at the stage of my life where I could get out and do the things that I had done 10 years ago or 15 years ago to push a team,” Jackson said. “And they pushed themselves and I really feel strongly that this is about them. However, having won 10 championships is a remarkable accomplishment, there’s no doubt about it.”

Bryant and Derek Fisher — two cogs that connect the last Lakers championship in 2002 to this one — each have four titles, their redemption arriving a year after they faltered badly against the Celtics.

There was no such cowering against the Magic. In a series defined by comebacks, overtimes and missed opportunities, the clinching game felt anticlimactic.

After Rafer Alston’s 3-pointer early in the third quarter, the Magic was within striking distance, 58-53. Lamar Odom, who had 17 points, responded with consecutive 3s as the Lakers again separated themselves by double digits, a margin they maintained the rest of the game.

Dwight Howard, who legitimized his status as one of the game’s stars during the postseason, had his night largely stymied by the defensive efforts of Pau Gasol.

Howard was humbled by fouls on the defensive end and harassed by Gasol, who finished with 14 points and 15 rebounds, on the offensive end. Howard ended his season quietly with 11 points and 10 rebounds.

The Magic fought back several times this postseason, rallying from a season-derailing injury to the All-Star point guard Jameer Nelson and series deficits against the Philadelphia 76ers and the Celtics. It fell short of the biggest trick of all.

The more Bryant yearned for another ring — perhaps to validate his post-O’Neal legacy — the more it seemed to slip through his grasp.

“It was like Chinese water torture, just keep dropping a drop of water on your temple,” Bryant said of the talk that he could not win a title without O’Neal. “It was just annoying. I would cringe every time. I was just like, it’s a challenge I’m just going to have to accept because there’s no way I’m going to argue it.”

With the title all but secured, Bryant’s emotions came out when he hugged Sasha Vujacic as the Lakers crowded one another during a timeout, their lead at 97-84, with 40.4 seconds left. His hands free from Mickael Pietrus and Courtney Lee, Bryant leaped in the air several times as the buzzer sounded and soon he was holding his daughters Natalia and Gianna.

On Sunday, Bryant made 10 of his 23 shots and all eight of his free throws. In the five-game series, he scored at least 30 points four times.

The Lakers largely shed themselves of Orlando in the first half. There was a brief head-to-head between the former teammates Hedo Turkoglu and Trevor Ariza. Both were given technicals and after a nerve-settling timeout, Ariza’s 3-point shot gave the Lakers their first lead, 42-40, with 5 minutes 9 seconds left in the first half.

Ariza, who ended with 15 points, sank another and scrambled for two steals as part of a 16-0 run that lifted the Lakers to a 56-46 halftime lead.

“They just always had an answer,” Orlando Coach Stan Van Gundy said. “We just couldn’t get over the top.”

Bryant’s series-long scowl was replaced by another look in the first quarter as Orlando raced to a 15-6 lead. He grimaced on the bench and covered his face with a towel after losing the ball on a double team by Rashard Lewis and Lee in a tussle that appeared to bother a nagging finger injury.

Bryant resurfaced immediately with a stepback jumper and a 3-pointer and finished the quarter with 11 points. As the game pressed on, he showed no effects of the early aches.

He embodied the championship path the Lakers took. They were damaged early but finished strong. The Lakers began the postseason in lackluster fashion and struggled against the decimated Houston Rockets in the second round, then gained their swagger as the playoffs wore on, dismissing the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference finals and, finally, the Magic.

IRANIAN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD MOUNTS A DEFENSE AGAINST ALLEGATIONS OF A RIGGED ELECTION.

TEHRAN — The Iranian authorities detained more than 100 prominent opposition members, and on Sunday unrest continued for a second day across Iran in the wake of the country’s disputed presidential election.

The leading opposition candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, issued a fresh statement calling for the election results to be canceled, as his supporters skirmished with a vast deployment of riot police and militia members on the edges of a victory rally organized by the government in central Tehran.

A moderate clerical body, the Association of Combatant Clergy, issued a statement posted on reformist Web sites saying the election was rigged and calling for it to be canceled, warning that “if this process becomes the norm, the republican aspect of the regime will be damaged and people will lose confidence in the system.”

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed the opposition’s allegations of large-scale election fraud, saying his landslide victory had given him a bigger mandate than ever. He hinted that Mr. Moussavi — who remained at home Sunday with the police closely monitoring his movements — might be punished for his defiance.

“He ran a red light, and he got a traffic ticket,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said of his rival, during a news conference at the presidential palace.

Those arrested were from all the major opposition factions and included the brother of a former president, Mohammad Khatami. Some were released later in the day.

Calling the opposition protests “unimportant,” Mr. Ahmadinejad suggested that they were the work of foreign agitators and journalists. But he also seemed to throw down the gauntlet to other nations, saying, “We are now asking the positions of all countries regarding the elections, and assessing their attitude to our people.”

But Mr. Ahmadinejad’s electoral rivals appeared to be holding firm in their protest against the vote.

Mr. Moussavi issued a statement saying he had asked Iran’s Guardian Council, which must certify the election for it to be legal, to cancel the vote. He also said he was being monitored by the authorities, and was unable to join his followers. His campaign headquarters have been closed down, he said.

Another candidate, the reformist cleric Mehdi Karroubi, echoed Mr. Moussavi’s demand for the election to be canceled.

“I am announcing again that the elections should not be allowed and the results have no legitimacy or social standing,” Mr. Karroubi said. “Therefore, I do not consider Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of the republic.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad also spoke at a square in central Tehran, surrounded by thousands of flag-waving protesters in what was clearly intended to be a show of popular support for his election victory. But the smell of tear gas and smoke drifted over the cheering crowds, and only a few blocks away, groups of protesters chanted their own slogans against the government, and bloodied people could be seen running from baton-wielding police officers.

As night fell, chants of “God is great!” could be heard from rooftops in several areas of the capital.

“No one led these people in the streets,” said Basu, 28, an opposition supporter who, like many others, was afraid to give his full name. “This is the least we can do; we cannot stay at home and watch them celebrate a fake election.”

He opened his shirt to show long, red welts on his chest where a Basij militia member had whipped him with a chain. Next to him, a female friend dressed in a black chador stood with a bloody scar on her forehead; she said she had been attacked by the police.

NORTH KOREA SENTENCES 2 REPORTERS TO 12 YEARS HARD LABOR.

N. Korea Sentences 2 U.S. Journalists to 12 Years of Hard Labor
By CHOE SANG-HUN
Published: June 8, 2009

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Monday sentenced two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor in a case widely seen as a test of how far the isolated Communist state was willing to take its confrontation with the United States.

The Central Court, the North’s highest court, held the trial of the two Americans, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, from Thursday to Monday and convicted them of “committing hostilities against the Korean nation and illegal entry,” the North’s official news agency, KCNA, said in a report monitored in Seoul.

Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were detained by North Korean soldiers patrolling the border between China and North Korea on March 17.

“We are deeply concerned by the reported sentencing of the two American citizen journalists by North Korean authorities and we are engaged through all possible channels to secure their release,” Ian C. Kelly, a State Department spokesman, said in statement quoted by Reuters. “We once again urge North Korea to grant the immediate release of the two American citizen journalists on humanitarian grounds.”

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has called the charges “baseless” and the government had demanded that the North forgo the legal proceedings and release the two women.

The trial was closed to foreign observers, including diplomats from the Swedish Embassy who have met the journalists on Washington’s behalf because the United States and North Korea have no diplomatic relations.

The sentence, which cannot be appealed, came amid rising tensions between Washington and Pyongyang. Earlier Monday, North Korea threatened to retaliate with “extreme” measures if the United Nations punished it for its nuclear test last month, and Washington warned that it might try to restore the North to its list of states that sponsor terrorism, a designation that could subject the impoverished state to more financial sanctions.

“Our response would be to consider sanctions against us as a declaration of war and answer it with extreme hard-line measures,” the North Korea’s state-run newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in a commentary.

Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were on a reporting assignment from Current TV, a San Francisco-based media company co-founded by Al Gore, the former vice president, when they were detained by the soldiers. The reporters were working on a report about North Korean refugees — women and children — who had fled their homeland in hopes of finding food in China.

The circumstances surrounding their capture remain unclear.

Analysts said they were pawns in a rapidly deteriorating confrontation between the United States and North Korea — a potential bargaining chip for the Pyongyang regime and a handicap for Washington in its efforts to pressure the government over its recent missile and nuclear tests.

The sentence to North Korea’s infamous prison camps came despite repeated appeals for clemency from the journalists’ families.

International human rights groups and defectors from the Communist state deplore the conditions at North Korean labor camps, where they say malnutrition, beatings and other rights abuses were rampant.

Ms. Ling is said to suffer from an ulcer and needs medication. Ms. Lee has a four-year-old daughter at home.

The sentence surprised some observers.

“They meted out a verdict somewhat harsher than I had expected. It means that North Korea doesn’t want to release them without Washington paying a price,” said Lee Woo-young, a North Korea specialist at the University of North Korea Studies in Seoul. “It sends a signal to Washington to become more active in negotiations.”

Lee Sang-hyun, an analyst at the Sejong Institute, said that North Korea would eventually free the two journalists — as Iran expelled Roxana Saberi, an American journalist who spent four months in an Iranian prison — but not before Washington sends a prominent envoy to Pyongyang.

Ms. Saberi was originally sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of spying for the United States but was released May 11 after an appeals court reduced her sentence to a two-year suspended sentence.

Defying not only its traditional foes — the United States, Japan and South Korea — but also its longtime ideological allies, China and Russia, North Korea launched an intermediate-range rocket on April 5 and conducted an underground nuclear test on May 25.

SONIA SOTOMAYOR

Sonia Sotomayor
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

“Sotomayor” redirects here. For other uses, see Sotomayor (disambiguation).
For the athlete, see Javier Sotomayor.
Sonia Maria Sotomayor

Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit
Incumbent
Assumed office 
October 7, 1998
Nominated by
Bill Clinton
Preceded by
J. Daniel Mahoney
Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
In office
August 12, 1992 – October 7, 1998
Nominated by
George H.W. Bush
Preceded by
John M. Walker, Jr.
Succeeded by
Victor Marrero
Born
June 25, 1954 (age 54)
The Bronx, New York
Nationality
American
Alma mater
Princeton University (A.B.)
Yale Law School (J.D.)
Religion
Roman Catholic[1]
Sonia Maria Sotomayor (pronounced /ˈsoʊnjə soʊtoʊmaɪˈjɔr/ ( listen);[2] born June 25, 1954) is a federal judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. On May 26, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Judge Sotomayor for appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice David Souter. If confirmed, she would be the court’s first Hispanic justice and third female justice.
Sotomayor is of Puerto Rican descent, and was born in the Bronx. Her father died when she was nine, and she was raised by her mother. Sotomayor graduated with an A.B., summa cum laude, from Princeton University in 1976, and received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where she was an editor at the Yale Law Journal. She was an advocate for the hiring of Latino faculty at both schools. She worked as an Assistant District Attorney in New York for five years before entering private practice in 1984. She played an active role on the boards of directors for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, the State of New York Mortgage Agency, and the New York City Campaign Finance Board. Sotomayor was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H. W. Bush in 1991 and confirmed in 1992.
Sotomayor has ruled on several high profile cases. In 1995, she issued the preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball which ended the 1994 baseball strike. Sotomayor made a ruling allowing The Wall Street Journal to publish Vince Foster’s final note. In 1997, she was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. After being blocked for more than a year by Senate Republicans fearful she was on the fast track to the Supreme Court, she was confirmed in 1998. On the Second Circuit, Sotomayor has heard appeals in more than 3,000 cases, and has written about 380 opinions. Sotomayor has also taught at the New York University School of Law and Columbia Law School.
Contents
[hide]
1 Early life
2 College and law school
3 Early legal career
4 Federal district judge
4.1 Nomination and confirmation
4.2 Judgeship
4.3 Notable rulings
5 Court of Appeals judge
5.1 Nomination and confirmation
5.2 Judgeship
5.3 Notable rulings
6 Other activities
7 Nomination to the United States Supreme Court
8 Awards and honors
9 Publications
10 See also
11 References
12 External links

[edit]Early life

Sotomayor and her parents
Sonia Maria Sotomayor[3] was born in The Bronx, a borough of New York City.[4] Her father, Juan Sotomayor, had a third-grade education and did not speak English.[5] He was from the Santurce area of San Juan.[6][7][5] Her mother, Celina Báez (born 1927),[8] was from the neighborhood of Santa Rosa in Lajas, a still mostly rural area on Puerto Rico’s southwest coast.[7] They left Puerto Rico, met, and married during World War II after Celina served in the Women’s Army Corps.[9] He worked as a tool-and-die worker and she as a telephone operator and then a practical nurse.[10] Sonia’s younger brother Juan Sotomayor (born c. 1957) is a physician and university professor in the Syracuse, New York area.[11][12]
Sotomayor was raised a Catholic[1] and grew up among other Puerto Ricans who settled in the East Bronx; she self-identifies as a “Nuyorican”.[9] In 1957, the family moved to the Bronxdale Houses housing project in Soundview,[13][14] which has at times been considered part of both the East Bronx and South Bronx.[15][16][17] Her relative proximity led to her becoming a lifelong fan of the New York Yankees.[18] In the late 1960s, the family moved to Co-op City in the Northeast Bronx.[10][17]

Sotomayor in a cap and gown for her eighth grade graduation.
Sonia was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age eight,[5][16] and began taking daily insulin injections.[19] (Her diabetes is considered to be well-controlled, with her A1C levels consistently less than 6.5.[20]) Her father died of a heart attack at age 42, when she was nine years old.[10] After this, she became fluent in English.[5] Sotomayor has said that was first inspired by the strong-willed Nancy Drew book character, and then after her diabetes diagnosis led doctors to suggest a different career from detective, was inspired to go into a legal career and become a judge by watching the Perry Mason television series.[5][18][19] She reflected in 1998: “I was going to college and I was going to become an attorney, and I knew that when I was ten. Ten. That’s no jest.”[18]
Celina Sotomayor put great stress on the value of education, and bought the Encyclopædia Britannica for her children, something unusual in the housing projects.[9] Sotomayor has credited her mother as being her “life inspiration”.[21] For grammar school, Sotomayor attended the parochial Blessed Sacrament School in Soundview,[22] where she was valedictorian and had a near-perfect attendance record.[17][23] Sotomayor then commuted to the academically rigorous parochial Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, where she was on the forensics team and was elected to the student government.[24][25] She graduated as valedictorian in 1972.[9]

[edit]College and law school
When Sotomayor entered Princeton University on a full scholarship,[26] there were few women students and fewer Latinos (about 20).[9][27] She later described the experience as like “a visitor landing in an alien country.”[28] She was too intimidated to ask questions for her first year there,[28] her writing and vocabulary skills were weak, and she was lacking knowledge in the classics.[29] She put in long hours in the library and over summers, worked with a professor outside class, and gained skills, knowledge, and confidence.[9][27][29] She became a moderate student activist[24][30] and co-chair of the Acción Puertorriqueña organization, which looked for more opportunities for Puerto Rican students and served as a social and political hub for them.[9][31][32] Sotomayor focused in particular on faculty hiring and curriculum; at the time, Princeton did not have a single full-time Latino professor, nor any class on Latin America.[33] The way Sotomayor later addressed the curriculum issue in an opinion piece in the college paper, “Not one permanent course in this university now deals in any notable detail with the Puerto Rican or Chicano cultures.”[34] After a visit to university president William G. Bowen in her sophomore year did not produce results,[32] the organization filed a formal letter of complaint in April 1974 with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, saying the school discriminated in its hiring and admission practices.[31][35][33] Sotomayor told The New York Times at the time that “Princeton is following a policy of benign neutrality and is not making substantive efforts to change,”[35] and she wrote opinion pieces for The Daily Princetonian with the same theme.[9] The university began to hire Latino faculty.[33][30] Sotomayor also successfully persuaded historian Peter Winn to create a seminar on Puerto Rican history and politics.[33] Sotomayor joined the board of Princeton’s Third World Center.[30] She also ran an after-school program for local children[30] and volunteered with Latino patients at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital.[9][36]
A history major, Sotomayor wrote her senior thesis at Princeton on Luis Muñoz Marín, the first democratically elected Governor of Puerto Rico, and on the territory’s struggles for economic and political self-determination.[9] The 178-page thesis, titled “La Historia Ciclica de Puerto Rico: The Impact of the Life of Luis Muñoz Marin on the Political and Economic History of Puerto Rico, 1930–1975″,[37] won honorable mention for the Latin American Studies Thesis Prize.[3] She won the Pyne Prize, the top award for undergraduates, which reflected both strong grades and extracurricular activities.[38][9][24] She was also elected to Phi Beta Kappa.[9] In 1976 she was awarded an A.B. from Princeton, graduating summa cum laude.[39] Sotomayor has described her time at Princeton as a life-changing experience.[40]
On August 14, 1976, just after graduating from Princeton, Sotomayor married Kevin Edward Noonan, whom she had dated since high school,[6][9] in a small chapel at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.[25] She used the married name Sonia Sotomayor de Noonan.[41][42][43] He became a biologist and a patent lawyer.[9] (The two divorced in 1983; they did not have children.[16])
In the fall of 1976, Sotomayor entered Yale Law School, again on a scholarship[18] and again to a place with very few Latinos.[32] She fit in well and was known as a hard studier, but was not considered among the top stars of her class.[42][13] She became an editor of the Yale Law Journal[6] and was also managing editor of the student-run Yale Studies in World Public Order publication.[44] Sotomayor published a law review note on the effect of possible Puerto Rican statehood on the island’s mineral and ocean rights.[9][24] She was a semi-finalist in the Barristers Union mock trial competition.[44] She was co-chair of a group for Latin, Asian and Native American students, and in her advocacy pushed for hiring more Hispanics for the faculty of the law school.[27][32] In her third year, she filed a formal complaint against the established Washington, D.C. law firm of Shaw, Pittman, Potts & Trowbridge for suggesting during a recruiting dinner that she was only at Yale via affirmative action.[24][32] Sotomayor refused to be interviewed by the firm further and filed her complaint with a faculty-student tribunal, which ruled in her favor.[33][32] News of the firm’s subsequent December 1978 apology made The Washington Post.[41] In 1979 she was awarded a J.D. from Yale Law School.[6] She was admitted to the New York Bar in 1980.[43]

[edit]Early legal career
On the recommendation of Yale professor and future judge José A. Cabranes, Sotomayor was hired out of law school as an Assistant District Attorney under New York County District Attorney Robert Morgenthau starting in 1979.[6][9][24] She said at the time that she did so with conflicted emotions: “There was a tremendous amount of pressure from my community, from the third-world community, at Yale. They could not understand why I was taking this job. I’m not sure I’ve ever resolved that problem.”[45] Working in the trial division,[46] she prosecuted everything from shoplifting and prostitution to robberies, assaults, and murders.[6][9] She felt the lower-level crimes were largely products of socioeconomic environment and poverty, but had a different attitude about serious felonies: “No matter how liberal I am, I’m still outraged by crimes of violence. Regardless of whether I can sympathize with the causes that lead these individuals to do these crimes, the effects are outrageous.”[45] Hispanic-on-Hispanic crime was of particular concern to her: “The saddest crimes for me were the ones that my own people committed against each other.”[5] She also worked on cases involving police brutality.[26] In general, she showed a passion for bringing law and order to the streets of New York, and had a special zeal in pursuing child pornography cases, unusual for the time.[24] She gained a reputation for preparedness and fairness.[18] Morgenthau later described her as a “fearless and effective prosecutor.”[26] She stayed a typical length of time in the post,[45] and had a common reaction to the job: “After a while, you forget there are decent, law-abiding people in life.”[47]
In 1984, she entered private practice, joining the boutique commercial litigation firm of Pavia & Harcourt in Manhattan as an associate.[6] There she specialized in intellectual property litigation, international law, and arbitration.[5][26][48][49] She later said, “I wanted to complete myself as an attorney.”[18] Although she had no civil litigation experience, the firm recruited her heavily, and she learned quickly on the job.[50] She was eager to try cases and argue in court, rather than be part of a larger law firm.[50] Her clients were mostly international corporations doing business in the United States;[24] much of her time was spent tracking down and suing counterfeiters of Fendi goods.[9][50] In some cases Sotomayor went on-site with the police to Harlem or Chinatown to have illegitimate merchandise seized, in the latter instance pursuing a fleeing culprit while riding on a motorcycle.[9][50] She said at the time that Pavia & Harcourt’s efforts were run “much like a drug operation”, and the successful rounding up of thousands of counterfeit accessories in 1986 was celebrated by “Fendi Crush”, a destruction-by-garbage-truck event at Tavern on the Green.[51] At other times she dealt with dry legal issues such as grain export contract disputes.[50] In 1988 she became a partner at the firm[44][29] and the job was lucrative.[16] She left in 1992 when she became a judge.[6]
In addition to her law firm work, Sotomayor found visible public service roles.[52] She was not connected to the party bosses that typically picked people for such jobs in New York, and indeed she was registered as an independent.[52] Instead, District Attorney Morgenthau, an influential figure, served as her patron.[52] In 1987, Governor of New York Mario Cuomo appointed Sotomayor to the board of the State of New York Mortgage Agency.[9] The agency helped low-income people get home mortgages and to provide insurance coverage for housing and AIDS hospices.[5] Despite being the youngest member of the board she was very involved in the details of the operation.[52] She was vocal in supporting the right to affordable housing, directing more funds to lower-income home owners, and in being skeptical about the effects of gentrification.[9][52] Sotomayor was appointed by Mayor Ed Koch in 1988 as one of the founding members of the New York City Campaign Finance Board, where she served for four years.[5][53] There she took an active, vigorous role[52] in the board’s implementation of a voluntary scheme wherein local candidates received public matching funds in exchange for limits on contributions and spending and agreeing to greater financial disclosure.[54] Sotomayor showed no patience with candidates who failed to follow regulations, and joined in rulings that fined, audited, or reprimanded the mayoral campaigns of Koch, David Dinkins, and Rudy Giuliani.[52]
Sotomayor was a member of the Board of Directors of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1980 to 1992.[55] There she was a top policy maker[5] who actively worked with the organization’s lawyers on issues such as New York City hiring practices, police brutality, the death penalty, and voting rights.[55] The group achieved its most visible triumph when it successfully blocked a city primary election on the grounds that New York City Council boundaries diminished the power of minority voters.[55]
During 1985 and 1986, Sotomayor served on the board of the Maternity Center Association, a Manhattan-based non-profit group which focused on improving the quality of maternity care.[56][57][58]

[edit]Federal district judge
[edit]Nomination and confirmation
Sotomayor had wanted to become a judge since elementary school, and was being recommended for a spot by Democratic New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.[5] Moynihan had an arrangement with his fellow New York Senator, Republican Al D’Amato, whereby he would get to choose roughly one out of every four New York district court seats even though a Republican was in the White House.[40][59][60] Moynihan also wanted to fulfill a public promise he had made to get a Hispanic judge appointed for New York.[16] When Moynihan’s staff recommended her to him, they said “Have we got a judge for you!”[5] Moynihan identified with her socio-economic and academic background and became convinced she would become the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.[9][52] D’Amato became an enthusiastic backer of Sotomayor,[61][62] who was seen as politically centrist at the time,[5][16] as well. Of the impending drop in salary from private practice, Sotomayor said: “I’ve never wanted to get adjusted to my income because I knew I wanted to go back to public service. And in comparison to what my mother earns and how I was raised, it’s not modest at all.”[5]
Sotomayor was thus nominated on November 27, 1991, by President George H. W. Bush to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York vacated by John M. Walker, Jr.[4] Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, led by a friendly Democratic majority, went smoothly for her in June 1992, with her pro bono activities winning praise from Senator Ted Kennedy and her getting unanimous approval from the committee.[5][61][63] Then a Republican senator blocked her nomination and that of three others for a while in retaliation for an unrelated block Democrats had put on another nominee.[61][64] D’Amato objected strongly;[64] some weeks later, the block was dropped and Sotomayor was confirmed by unanimous consent[46][61] by the full United States Senate on August 11, 1992, and received her commission the next day.[4]
Sotomayor became the youngest judge in the Southern District[65] and the first Hispanic federal judge anywhere in New York State.[66] She became the first Puerto Rican woman to serve as in a U.S. federal court.[67] She was also one of only 7 women among the district’s 58 judges.[5] She moved from Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn back to the Bronx in order to live within her district.[5]
[edit]Judgeship
Sotomayor generally kept a low public profile as a district court judge.[18] She showed a willingness to take anti-government positions in a number of cases, and during her first year in the seat, she received high ratings from liberal public-interest groups.[16] Other sources and organizations regarded her as a centrist during this period.[5][16] In criminal cases, she gained a reputation as for tough sentencing and was not viewed as a pro-defense judge.[68]
As a trial judge, she garnered a reputation for being well-prepared in advance of a case and moving cases along a tight schedule.[16] Lawyers before her court viewed her as plain-spoken, intelligent, demanding, and sometimes somewhat unforgiving; one said, “She does not have much patience for people trying to snow her. You can’t do it.”[16]
[edit]Notable rulings
On March 30, 1995, in Silverman v. Major League Baseball Player Relations Committee, Inc.,[69] Sotomayor issued the preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball, preventing it from unilaterally implementing a new collective bargaining agreement and using replacement players. Her ruling ended the 1994 baseball strike after 232 days, the day before the new season was scheduled to begin. The Second Circuit upheld Sotomayor’s decision and denied the owners’ request to stay the ruling.[18][70][71] The decision raised her profile,[9] won her the plaudits of baseball fans,[18] and had a lasting effect upon the game.[72]
In Dow Jones v. Department of Justice (1995),[73] Sotomayor sided with The Wall Street Journal in its efforts to obtain and publish a photocopy of the last note left by former Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster. Sotomayor ruled that the public had “a substantial interest”[74] in viewing the note and enjoined the U.S. Justice Department from blocking its release.
In New York Times Co. v. Tasini (1997), freelance journalists sued the New York Times Company for copyright infringement for the New York Times’ inclusion in an electronic archival database (LexisNexis) the work of freelancers it had published. Sotomayor ruled that the publisher had the right to license the freelancer’s work. This decision was reversed on appeal, and the Supreme Court upheld the reversal; two dissenters (John Paul Stevens and Stephen Breyer) took Sotomayor’s position.[75]
In Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. v. Carol Publishing Group (also in 1997), Sotomayor ruled that a book of trivia from the television program Seinfeld infringed on the copyright of the show’s producer and did not constitute legal fair use. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld Sotomayor’s ruling.

[edit]Court of Appeals judge
[edit]Nomination and confirmation
On June 25, 1997, Sotomayor was nominated by President Bill Clinton to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which was vacated by J. Daniel Mahoney.[4] Her nomination was initially expected to have smooth sailing,[18][76] but as The New York Times described, “[it became] embroiled in the sometimes tortured judicial politics of the Senate.”[77] Some Republicans had become convinced that Sotomayor was being fast-tracked for a near-term Supreme Court nomination, despite there being no vacancy at the time nor any indication the Clinton administration was considering nominating her or any Hispanic, and tried to slow down her confirmation accordingly.[13][76][77] Radio commentator Rush Limbaugh weighed in that Sotomayor was an ultraliberal who was on a “rocket ship” to the highest court.[76]
During her September 1997 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sotomayor parried strong questioning from some Republican members about mandatory sentencing, gay rights, and her level of respect for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.[63] After a long wait, she was approved by the committee in March 1998, with only two dissensions.[63][76] However, in June 1998, The Wall Street Journal editorial page denounced her as a left-wing judicial activist, and the Republican block continued.[18][76] Ranking Democratic committee member Patrick Leahy criticized the Republican move by saying, “Their reasons are stupid at best and cowardly at worst.”[76]
During 1998, several Hispanic organizations organized a petition drive in New York State, generating hundreds of signatures from New Yorkers to try to convince New York Republican Senator Al D’Amato to push the Senate leadership to bring Sotomayor’s nomination to a vote.[78] D’Amato, a backer of Sotomayor to begin with and additionally concerned about being up for re-election that year,[78] helped move Republican leadership.[9] Her nomination had been pending for over a year when Majority Leader Trent Lott scheduled the vote.[77] With complete Democratic support, and support from 25 Republican senators including Judiciary chair Orrin Hatch,[77] Sotomayor was confirmed on October 2, 1998 by a 67-29 vote.[79] She received her commission on October 7.[4] The confirmation experience left Sotomayor somewhat angry; she said shortly afterwards that during the hearings Republicans had assumed her political beliefs based on her being a Latina: “That series of questions, I think, were symbolic of a set of expectations that some people had [that] I must be liberal. It is stereotyping, and stereotyping is perhaps the most insidious of all problems in our society today.”[18]
[edit]Judgeship

Sotomayor attended a 2004 exhibit on the Fourteenth Amendment, Thurgood Marshall, and Brown v. Board of Education with fellow circuit judges Robert A. Katzmann and Damon J. Keith.
Over her ten years on the circuit court, Sotomayor has heard appeals in more than 3,000 cases, and has written about 380 opinions where she was in the majority.[9] The Supreme Court reviewed five of those, reversing three and affirming two[9] – not high numbers for an appellate judge of that many years[13] and a typical percentage of reversals.[80] Sotomayor’s circuit court rulings have led to her being considered a political centrist by the American Bar Association Journal[49][81] and other sources and organizations.[49][65][81][82][83][84] Several lawyers, legal experts, and news organizations also identify her as someone who has liberal inclinations.[85][86][87] In any case, the Second Circuit’s caseload typically skews more towards business and securities law rather than hot-button social or constitutional issues.[13] Sotomayor has tended to write narrowly-formed rulings that rely upon close application of the law rather than import general philosophical viewpoints,[13] and her rulings in over 150 cases involving business and civil law are generally unpredictable and do not represent consistently pro-business or anti-business tendencies.[88] Sotomayor’s influence in the federal judiciary, as measured by the number of citations of her rulings by other judges and in law review articles, has increased significantly during the length of her appellate judgeship and has been greater than that of some other prominent federal appeals court judges.[89]
Sotomayor was a member of the Second Circuit Task Force on Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts.[75] In October 2001, she presented the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture at UC Berkeley School of Law;[12] entitled “A Latina Judge’s Voice”, it was published in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal the following spring.[90][91] In the speech, she discussed the characteristics of her Latina upbringing and culture and discussed the history of minorities and women ascending to the federal bench.[92] She said the low number of minority women on the federal bench at that time was “shocking”.[32] She then discussed at length how her own experiences as a Latina might affect her decisions as a judge.[92] In any case, her past background in activism has not necessarily influenced her rulings: a study of 50 racial discrimination cases brought before her panel showed that 45 of them were rejected, with Sotomayor never filing a dissent.[32] An expanded study showed that Sotomayor has decided 97 cases involving a claim of discrimination, and has rejected those claims nearly 90 percent of the time.[93]
In the Court of Appeals seat, Sotomayor has gained a reputation for vigorous and blunt behavior towards lawyers appealing their cases, sometimes to the point of brusque and curt treatment or testy interruptions.[9][94] She is known for extensive preparation for oral arguments and for running a “hot bench”, where judges ask lawyers plenty of questions.[94][95] Unprepared lawyers suffer the consequences, but the vigorous questioning is an aid to lawyers seeking to tailor their arguments to the judge’s concerns.[95] The 2009 Almanac of the Federal Judiciary, which contains anonymous evaluations of judges by lawyers who appear before them, contained a wide range of reactions to Sotomayor.[9] Comments also diverged among lawyers willing to be named. Attorney Sheema Chaudhry said, “She’s brilliant and she’s qualified, but I just feel that she can be very, how do you say, temperamental.”[94] Defense lawyer Gerald B. Lefcourt said, “She used her questioning to make a point, as opposed to really looking for an answer to a question she did not understand.”[94] In contrast, Second Circuit Judge Richard C. Wesley said that his interactions with Sotomayor had been “totally antithetical to this perception that has gotten some traction that she is somehow confrontational.”[94] Second Circuit Judge and former teacher Guido Calabresi said his tracking showed that Sotomayor’s questioning patterns were no different from other members of the court and added, “Some lawyers just don’t like to be questioned by a woman. [The criticism] was sexist, plain and simple.”[94]
Sotomayor’s law clerks regard her as a valuable and strong mentor, and she has said that she views them as like family.[96] She lives modestly and has few financial assets; regarding her short financial disclosure reports, she said, “When you don’t have money, it’s easy. There isn’t anything there to report.”[96]
In 2005, Senate Democrats suggested Sotomayor, among others, to President George W. Bush as a nominee acceptable to them to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.[97]
[edit]Notable rulings
Abortion
In the 2002 decision Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush,[98][99] Sotomayor upheld the Bush administration’s implementation of the Mexico City Policy, which states that “the United States will no longer contribute to separate nongovernmental organizations which perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning in other nations.”[100] Sotomayor held that the policy did not constitute a violation of equal protection, as “the government is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds.”[101]
First Amendment rights
In Pappas v. Giuliani (2002),[102] Sotomayor dissented from her colleagues’ ruling that the New York Police Department could terminate an employee from his desk job who sent racist materials through the mail. Sotomayor argued that the First Amendment protected speech by the employee “away from the office, on [his] own time,” even if that speech was “offensive, hateful, and insulting,” and that therefore the employee’s First Amendment claim should have gone to trial rather than being dismissed on summary judgment.[103]
In 2005, in United States v. Quattrone,[104] Judge Sotomayor wrote the opinion for the Second Circuit panel striking down on First Amendment grounds a district court’s order forbidding the media from publishing the names of jurors who had participated in Frank Quattrone’s first trial on charges of obstructing investigations related to technology IPOs. The first trial ended in a deadlocked jury and a mistrial, and the district court ordered the media not to publish the names of jurors, even though those names had been disclosed in open court. Judge Sotomayor held that although it was important to protect the fairness of the retrial, the district court’s order was an unconstitutional prior restraint on free speech and violated the right of the press to “to report freely on events that transpire in an open courtroom.”[104]
In 2008, Sotomayor was on a three-judge panel in Doninger v. Niehoff[105] that unanimously affirmed, in an opinion written by Second Circuit Judge Debra Livingston, the district court’s judgment that Lewis S. Mills High School did not violate the First Amendment rights of a student when it barred her from running for student government after she called the superintendent and other school officials “douchebags” in a blog post written while off-campus that encouraged students to call an administrator and “piss her off more”.[105] Judge Livingston held that the district judge did not abuse her discretion in holding that the student’s speech “foreseeably create[d] a risk of substantial disruption within the school environment”,[106] which is the precedent in the Second Circuit for when schools may regulate off-campus speech.[105] Although Sotomayor did not write this opinion, she has been criticized by some who disagree with it.[107]
Second Amendment rights
Sotomayor was part of the three-judge Second Circuit panel that affirmed the district court’s ruling in Maloney v. Cuomo (2009).[108] Maloney was arrested for possession of nunchaku, which are illegal in New York; Maloney argued that this law violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms. The Second Circuit’s per curiam opinion noted that the Supreme Court has not, so far, ever held that the Second Amendment is binding against state governments. On the contrary, in Presser v. Illinois, a Supreme Court case from 1886, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment “is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state.”[109] With respect to the Presser v. Illinois precedent, the panel stated that only the Supreme Court has “the prerogative of overruling its own decisions,”[110] and the recent Supreme Court case of District of Columbia v. Heller (which struck down the district’s gun ban as unconstitutional) did “not invalidate this longstanding principle.”[111] The panel upheld the lower court’s decision dismissing Maloney’s challenge to New York’s law against possession of nunchaku.[112] On June 2, 2009, a Seventh Circuit panel, including prominent conservative judges Richard Posner and Frank Easterbrook, unanimously agreed with Maloney v. Cuomo, citing the case in their decision turning back a challenge to Chicago’s gun laws and noting the Supreme Court precedents remain in force until altered by the Supreme Court itself.[110]
Fourth Amendment rights
In N.G. & S.G. ex rel. S.C. v. Connecticut (2004),[113] Sotomayor dissented from her colleagues’ decision to uphold a series of strip searches of “troubled adolescent girls” in juvenile detention centers. While Sotomayor agreed that some of the strip searches at issue in the case were lawful, she would have held that due to the “the severely intrusive nature of strip searches,”[113] they should not be allowed “in the absence of individualized suspicion, of adolescents who have never been charged with a crime.”[113] She argued that an “individualized suspicion” rule was more consistent with Second Circuit precedent than the majority’s rule.[113]
In Leventhal v. Knapek (2001),[114] Sotomayor rejected a Fourth Amendment challenge by a U.S. Department of Transportation employee whose employer searched his office computer. She held that, “Even though [the employee] had some expectation of privacy in the contents of his office computer, the investigatory searches by the DOT did not violate his Fourth Amendment rights”[114] because here “there were reasonable grounds to believe” that the search would reveal evidence of “work-related misconduct.”[114]
Alcohol in commerce
In 2004, Sotomayor was part of the judge panel that ruled in Granholm v. Heald that New York’s law prohibiting out-of-state wineries from shipping directly to consumers in New York was constitutional even though in-state wineries were allowed to. The case, which invoked the 21st Amendment, was appealed and attached to another case. The case reached the Supreme Court later on as Swedenburg v. Kelly and was overruled in a 5-4 decision that found the law was discriminatory and unconstitutional. [115]
Employment discrimination
Sotomayor was a member of a 2008 Second Circuit panel in the high-profile case Ricci v. DeStefano that upheld the right of the City of New Haven to throw out its test for firefighters and start over with a new test, because the City believed the test had a “disparate impact”[116] on minority firefighters. (No black firefighters qualified for promotion under the test, whereas some had qualified under tests used in previous years.) The City was concerned that minority firefighters might sue under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The City chose not to certify the test results and a lower court had previously upheld the City’s right to do this. Several white firefighters and one Hispanic firefighter who had passed the test, including the lead plaintiff who has dyslexia and had put much extra effort into studying, sued the City of New Haven, claiming that their rights were violated. After an appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case April 2009,[40][75][116] and a ruling has not yet been issued.
Antitrust
In Clarett v. National Football League (2004),[117] Sotomayor upheld the National Football League’s eligibility rules requiring players to wait three full seasons after high school graduation before entering the NFL draft. Maurice Clarett challenged these rules, which were part of the collective bargaining agreement between the NFL and its players, on antitrust grounds. Sotomayor held that Clarett’s claim would upset the established “federal labor law favoring and governing the collective bargaining process.”[118]
Civil rights
In Correctional Services Corp. v. Malesko (2000),[119] Sotomayor, writing for the court, supported the right of an individual to sue a private corporation working on behalf of the federal government for alleged violations of that individual’s constitutional rights. Reversing a lower court decision, Sotomayor found that an existing Supreme Court doctrine, known as “Bivens” — which allows suits against individuals working for the federal government for constitutional rights violations — could be applied to the case of a former prisoner seeking to sue the private company operating the federal halfway house facility in which he resided. The Supreme Court reversed Sotomayor’s ruling in a 5-4 decision, saying that the Bivens doctrine could not be expanded to cover private entities working on behalf of the federal government. Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer dissented, siding with Sotomayor’s original ruling.
Property rights
In Krimstock v. Kelly (2002),[120] Sotomayor wrote an opinion halting New York City’s practice of seizing the motor vehicles of drivers accused of driving while intoxicated and some other crimes and holding those vehicles for “months or even years” during criminal proceedings. Noting the importance of cars to many individuals’ livelihoods or daily activities, she held that it violated individuals’ due process rights to hold the vehicles without permitting the owners to challenge the City’s continued possession of their property.
In Brody v. Village of Port Chester (2003),[121] a takings case, Sotomayor wrote an opinion remanding the case to the district court for further proceedings[clarification needed] on whether Brody had adequate notice of the Village’s condemnation proceedings against his property. (A related proceeding in the lower court was called Didden v. Village of Port Chester. The case has drawn criticism from libertarian commentators.[122][123])

[edit]Other activities

Sotomayor with her nephews at Yankee Stadium in 2007
Sotomayor was an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law from 1998 to 2007.[124] There she taught trial and appellate advocacy as well as a federal appellate court seminar.[124] She has been a lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School since 1999, a paying, adjunct faculty position.[57][125] There she created and has co-taught a class called the Federal Appellate Externship every semester since 2000; it combines classroom, moot court, and Second Circuit chambers work.[125] She became a member of the Board of Trustees of Princeton University in 2006.[36] She has given frequent speeches,[33] which have often focused on ethnic identity and experience, the need for diversity, and America’s struggle with the implications of its diverse makeup.[126]
Sotomayor lives in Greenwich Village in New York City and has few financial assets other than her home.[126] Sotomayor does not belong to a Catholic parish or attend Mass, but does attend church for important occasions.[25] She maintains ties with Puerto Rico, visiting once or twice a year, speaking there occasionally, and visiting cousins and other relatives who still live there.[8][127] In 2008, Sotomayor became a member of the Belizean Grove, an invitation-only women’s group modeled after the Bohemian Grove.[128]
In 1997, Sotomayor described New York construction contractor Peter White as her fiancé, but the relationship ended a year or two later without their getting married.[6][9]

[edit]Nomination to the United States Supreme Court
Main article: Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination
Wikinews has related news: Obama nominates Sonia Sotomayor to US Supreme Court

Sotomayor met with President Obama at the White House on May 21, 2009, five days before the announcement of her nomination.
Since President Barack Obama’s election there had been speculation that Sotomayor could be a leading candidate for a Supreme Court seat if one became available on the court during Obama’s term.[49][81][82][129][130][131][132] New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand wrote a joint letter to Obama urging him to appoint Sotomayor, or alternatively Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, to the Supreme Court if a vacancy should arise on the Court during his term.[133] The White House first contacted Sotomayor about the possibility of her being nominated on April 27, 2009.[126] On April 30, 2009, Justice David Souter’s retirement plans leaked to the media, and Sotomayor received early attention as a possible nominee for the seat to be vacated in June 2009.[132] On May 13, 2009, the Associated Press reported that Obama was considering Sotomayor, among others, for possible appointment to the United States Supreme Court.[134] On May 26, 2009, Obama nominated Sotomayor to the court.[135] If confirmed, this would make her the Supreme Court’s first Latina justice.[133][136][137][138][139] She would also be the third woman to serve on the Court, following Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Her appointment would give the Court a record six Roman Catholic justices serving at the same time.[25]
Sotomayor’s nomination won praise from Democrats and liberals; Senate Republican leaders said they would not filibuster her, and Democrats appeared to have sufficient votes to confirm her.[140] The strongest criticism of her nomination came from conservatives and some Republican senators regarding a line that she used in some form in a number of her speeches and that became best known from its use in her 2001 Berkeley Law lecture:[92][140] “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”[12][141] The rhetoric quickly became inflamed, with radio commentator Rush Limbaugh and former Republican leader Newt Gingrich calling Sotomayor a “racist” (although the latter later backtracked from that claim),[142] while John Cornyn and other Republican senators denounced such attacks but said that Sotomayor’s approach was troubling.[143][144] Media Matters for America argued that those criticizing and reporting on the speech left out the important point that her statement was in the context of sex and gender discrimination cases, not legal decisions in general.[145][146] Backers of Sotomayor offered a variety of explanations for and defenses of the remark.[147] White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs stated that Sotomayor’s word choice in 2001 had been “poor”.[143] Sotomayor subsequently clarified her remark via Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy, saying that while life experience shapes who one is, “ultimately and completely” a judge follows the law regardless of personal background.[148]
A Gallup poll released a week after the nomination showed 54 percent of Americans in favor of Sotomayor’s confirmation compared with 28 percent in opposition, similar to public support figures for most past nominees who gained Senate confirmation.[149] On June 5, Rasmussen Reports published a survey stating that 88 percent expected that she would be confirmed by the Senate.[150]

[edit]Awards and honors
Sotomayor has received honorary law degrees from Lehman College (1999),[75] Princeton University (2001),[75] Brooklyn Law School (2001),[75] Pace University School of Law (2003),[151] Hofstra University (2006),[57] and Northeastern University School of Law (2007).[152]
She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society in 2002.[153] She was given the Outstanding Latino Professional Award in 2006 by the Latino/a Law Students Association.[154]