Sotomayor Is Pragmatic, Empathetic Lawyers Say

New York Law Journal
By Mark Hamblett
May 15, 2009

Lawyers who have appeared before Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who is on the short list of candidates being considered for an upcoming vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court, described her as an aggressive questioner who comes to the bench prepared and, although she is regarded as a member of the more liberal wing of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, a pragmatist who would bring a different perspective to the high court. Veteran practitioner Max Gitter of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton said Judge Sotomayor would be a "great choice" for President Barack Obama to fill the seat created by the retirement of U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, because she has a keen awareness of the human consequences of a court's opinion."She has more than just legal smarts," Mr. Gitter said. "She really keeps her ear to the ground."Elkin Abramowitz of Morvillo, Abramowitz, Grand, Iason, Anello & Bohrer sees Judge Sotomayor as a "natural" pick for the president."I think she's solid, as far as I can see there is no political bias one way or another," Mr. Abramowitz said. "I think that, like Obama, she's a pragmatist and a hard worker."Judge Sotomayor, 54, was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes at 8, lost her father one year later and she and her younger brother were raised in the Bronx by their mother, a professional nurse.Hard work led her to Princeton University, where she graduated summa cum laude in 1976, and then Yale School, where she graduated in 1979.After spending the next five years as a prosecutor with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, she moved to the commercial litigation firm Pavia & Harcourt until 1992, when her nomination to the bench in the Southern District by President George H.W. Bush, made on the recommendation of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was confirmed by the U.S. Senate. She became the first Hispanic woman named to the federal bench in New York.While at the Southern District, Judge Sotomayor effectively ended the Major League Baseball players strike in 1995 when, after scolding the lawyers for baseball club owners, she granted an injunction sought by the National Labor Relations Board.In 1997, she handed Manhattan lawyer William Duker (briefly a partner of the recently sentenced Marc Dreier) two years and nine months in prison for defrauding the federal government. Judge Sotomayor said she reached the sentence after balancing the harm Mr. Duker caused by inflating his bills by $1.4 million with the good he had performed by recovering millions of dollars from failed savings and loans.In 1998, Judge Sotomayor ruled that two business improvement districts, the Grand Central Partnership and the 34th Street Partnership, violated the minimum wage laws by paying homeless people they hired only $1 to $1.50 an hour and denying them overtime.

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