Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the first Latina on the Supreme Court. She made history when she was appointed and confirmed to the Court in 2009. She has made remarkable history in the legal field and as a lawyer and a judge.
Justice Sotomayor started her higher education journey with a bachelor’s degree from Princeton before she went on to get her JD from Yale Law. Both of these schools are prestigious.Â
Justice Sotomayor started her career in law as an Assistant DA in Manhattan for DA Robert Morgenthau. She was a prosecutor for five years before she went into private practice for seven years. In 1991, she was nominated by the first Bush administration to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.Â
She was a judge on this court for eight years, with one of her more notable cases as judge for this court was a case that ended a Major League Baseball strike.Â
In 1997, Justice Sotomayor was nominated by President Bill Clinton to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. On this court, she heard over 3000 cases and wrote the majority opinion for 380 cases.Â
She served on the Second Circuit for twelve years before she was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2009 by President Obama. She had an easy Senate confirmation and heard her first case Citizens United v. FEC in January 2010.Â
She has been Supreme Court Justice since her nomination in 2009. She was the third woman to be sworn into the Supreme Court ever. She has decided on landmark cases like Obergefell v. Hodges which legalized same sex marriage and dissented on the decision of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.Â
She is an inspiration to all women and girls. She is one of six females to ever serve on the United States Supreme Court. In a field of mainly men, young girls can look to Justice Sotomayor and see someone that looks like them.Â
The United States Judicial Branch is still lacking in diversity, so the fact that Justice Sotomayor was the first and only Latina Supreme Court Justice is both upsetting and uplifting. It is upsetting in the fact that we only have one Latina judge on a 235-year-old court. But it is uplifting that there is one Latina Justice now which is progress and that at least the Supreme Court is attempting to make changes in its diversity.Â