By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Last Updated: 8:18PM BST 02 May 2009
Sonia Sotomayor is tipped to replace Justice David Souter, who resigned on Friday Photo: Pace.edu Now Sonia Sotomayor, who was raised by Puerto Rican immigrants on a Bronx housing project, is set to make history after being tipped to become the US Supreme Court’s first Latina justice.
Mrs Sotomayor, 59, is thought to be the preferred choice of President Barack Obama to replace Justice David Souter, who announced his resignation from America’s highest court on Friday.
Mrs Sotomayor, 59, is thought to be the preferred choice of President Barack Obama to replace Justice David Souter, who announced his resignation from America’s highest court on Friday.
Given the Supreme Court’s paramount role in adjudicating on key “cultural issues” such as abortion, gun control and gay marriage, nominating her would send out a powerful signal about Mr Obama’s commitment to promote people from working class and ethnic minority backgrounds,
But it has prompted unease among America’s Right-wing, who fear her strong liberal credentials will undermine the court’s delicate balance between conservative and progressive thinking.
Mrs Sotomayor’s life story of hardship and setbacks in her early years bears more than a passing resemblance to Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama’s best-selling memoir.
Her mother, who worked with heroin addicts, raised Sotomayor and her younger brother alone in a neighbourhood riven with racial tensions, gang wars and drug violence. Her father, a factory worker, died when she was nine.
As a child, she studied hard at school and initially wanted to become a detective after reading the Nancy Drew storybooks. But at the age of eight, she was diagnosed with diabetes and was told she would have to abandon her childhood dream. By the age of ten, she had settled on becoming a lawyer, determined to escape the district she was brought up in by going to college and rising to the very top of her career.
“I was going to college and I was going to become an attorney, and I knew that when I was ten,” said Mrs Sotomayor, who went on to Yale Law School and then the high-powered Manhattan District Attorney’s office. “Ten. That’s no jest... If I couldn’t do detective work as a police officer, I could do it as a lawyer.”
A Democratic President has not had an opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice for 15 years, and the battles over nominations have left deep scars.
The court has become a crucible for such fiercely contested issues as abortion, gun control, immigration, stem cell research and the torture of terrorist suspects.
Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host with 25 million listeners, has already attacked Mrs Sotomayor, who is currently a Federal Court judge, as a liberal activist.
The next appointment will not decisively tip the court’s balance in favour of liberals, but Republicans are determined to resist it nonetheless, fearing Democrat dominance in all branches of government – the Court, the Presidency and Congress.
However, with the defection to the Democrats earlier this week of moderate Republican Senator Arlen Specter, the president is likely to gain the 60-vote majority needed to see the appointment pushed through.
Mr Souter, who is resigning for personal reasons, is expected to step down sometime this summer. Mr Obama has not yet officially named a successor, but has already hinted that he wants someone with the kind of gritty life experience that Mrs Sotamayor’s CV boasts.
“I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook,” he said. “It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives.”
He did not use the buzz word “diversity” but the President is under huge political pressure to appoint the first Hispanic to the court. In the race for the White House he had a rocky relationship with Hispanic voters who make up 15 per cent of US voters, although he ultimately won them over.
Other possible names include Ann Williams, a 59-year-old black woman and Notre Dame Law School graduate as well as the Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the 49-year-old former dean of Harvard Law School.
Whoever Mr Obama chooses, he will also have to consider the views of Democrats who operate not so much as a party but like a sprawling tribe, with multiple political, cultural, economic and geographic interests.
With five of the nine member court already over age 70, the administration has been preparing for an anticipated vacancy for months.
But it has prompted unease among America’s Right-wing, who fear her strong liberal credentials will undermine the court’s delicate balance between conservative and progressive thinking.
Mrs Sotomayor’s life story of hardship and setbacks in her early years bears more than a passing resemblance to Dreams from My Father, Barack Obama’s best-selling memoir.
Her mother, who worked with heroin addicts, raised Sotomayor and her younger brother alone in a neighbourhood riven with racial tensions, gang wars and drug violence. Her father, a factory worker, died when she was nine.
As a child, she studied hard at school and initially wanted to become a detective after reading the Nancy Drew storybooks. But at the age of eight, she was diagnosed with diabetes and was told she would have to abandon her childhood dream. By the age of ten, she had settled on becoming a lawyer, determined to escape the district she was brought up in by going to college and rising to the very top of her career.
“I was going to college and I was going to become an attorney, and I knew that when I was ten,” said Mrs Sotomayor, who went on to Yale Law School and then the high-powered Manhattan District Attorney’s office. “Ten. That’s no jest... If I couldn’t do detective work as a police officer, I could do it as a lawyer.”
A Democratic President has not had an opportunity to nominate a Supreme Court justice for 15 years, and the battles over nominations have left deep scars.
The court has become a crucible for such fiercely contested issues as abortion, gun control, immigration, stem cell research and the torture of terrorist suspects.
Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host with 25 million listeners, has already attacked Mrs Sotomayor, who is currently a Federal Court judge, as a liberal activist.
The next appointment will not decisively tip the court’s balance in favour of liberals, but Republicans are determined to resist it nonetheless, fearing Democrat dominance in all branches of government – the Court, the Presidency and Congress.
However, with the defection to the Democrats earlier this week of moderate Republican Senator Arlen Specter, the president is likely to gain the 60-vote majority needed to see the appointment pushed through.
Mr Souter, who is resigning for personal reasons, is expected to step down sometime this summer. Mr Obama has not yet officially named a successor, but has already hinted that he wants someone with the kind of gritty life experience that Mrs Sotamayor’s CV boasts.
“I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook,” he said. “It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives.”
He did not use the buzz word “diversity” but the President is under huge political pressure to appoint the first Hispanic to the court. In the race for the White House he had a rocky relationship with Hispanic voters who make up 15 per cent of US voters, although he ultimately won them over.
Other possible names include Ann Williams, a 59-year-old black woman and Notre Dame Law School graduate as well as the Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the 49-year-old former dean of Harvard Law School.
Whoever Mr Obama chooses, he will also have to consider the views of Democrats who operate not so much as a party but like a sprawling tribe, with multiple political, cultural, economic and geographic interests.
With five of the nine member court already over age 70, the administration has been preparing for an anticipated vacancy for months.
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