SFGate.com
David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times
Friday, August 7, 2009
Justice Sonia Sotomayor will bring something new to the U.S. Supreme Court, far beyond her being its first Latina member.
Her background and experiences undoubtedly will affect her thinking and influence her decisions, but they probably will do so in ways that were hardly mentioned during her confirmation hearings.
Sotomayor - who was confirmed Thursday on a largely partisan 68-31 vote by the Senate - will be the only justice whose first language was not English. She spoke Spanish at home as a child, and she will join a court that enforces a federal law that calls for equal opportunity in schools for children who do not speak English.
She has been diabetic since childhood, a medical condition that is classified as a disability under the federal law that forbids discrimination against persons with physical or mental impairments.
Disability-rights advocates recently have suffered some big defeats in the court, and they have high hopes for her.
"We're very excited. We don't feel we have had a champion on the current court," said Andrew Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities.
Affirmative action
She was raised in a city housing project where drugs and crime were more common than Ivy League scholarly success. Sotomayor refers to herself proudly as an "affirmative action baby," having been admitted to Princeton University with less-than-stellar SAT scores, but who nonetheless graduated with highest honors.
She will "change the conversation on affirmative action" within the court, says University of Maryland law Professor Sherrilyn Ifill. The only other minority on the court, Justice Clarence Thomas, is a staunch foe, maintaining that affirmative action policies taint the accomplishments of all minorities.
"Her story of how hard she worked to graduate first in her class from Princeton makes her really the poster child for the benefits of affirmative action," Ifill said.
Sotomayor is also a divorced woman with no children but a close relationship with an extended family.
"She is a modern woman with a nontraditional family," said Sylvia Lazos, a law professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. "She is much more reflective of contemporary American society than the other justices, like Alito and Roberts."
She was referring to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, both of whom are married and have two children. The court soon is expected to face a series of cases involving the legal rights of other nontraditional families with gay and lesbian couples.
Even her personal finances look more like contemporary America. According to friends, Sotomayor has struggled to pay her mortgage and her credit card bills, and her financial disclosures show she has no substantial savings or stock portfolio.
Full Story: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/08/06/MNH81953TG.DTL
No comments:
Post a Comment