Sotomayor Is Informal, Insightful in Law School Appearance
Judges can appear aloof. After all, they don black robes, are perched on high platforms, and make rulings that are rarely overturned.
Sonia Sotomayor, an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, is not that kind of judge.
As the featured speaker at the 2016 Stein Lecture, sponsored by the Law School, Sotomayor wandered the aisles of Northrop Memorial Auditorium, shaking hands and sometimes embracing audience members while answering questions.
“My mother called me ají, which is ‘jumping pepper’ in Spanish,” she explained.
A diagnosis of type 1 diabetes at age 8 didn’t slow her down—but it did give her pause. “Why was I picked?” she wondered. That sense of vulnerability translated into making the most of every moment.
“I had a sense early on that life would be short,” she said.
Despite growing up in a rough housing project in the Bronx, Sotomayor earned admission to Princeton University just a few years after the institution began accepting women. In 1976, she graduated summa cum laude from Princeton and enrolled at Yale Law School, where she served as editor of the prestigious Yale Law Journal.
When she began practicing law, few women held legal leadership positions. That changed in 1981, when Sandra Day O’Connor was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“What did it mean to me?” Sotomayor asked. “Hope.”
Twenty-eight years later, Sotomayor became just the third woman to serve on the nation’s highest court. “I was scared, seriously,” she said of her new role. “I was petrified. There is a sense of fear of taking on a position of so much responsibility.”
Sotomayor’s first case was, she quipped, a “tiny, little” one called Citizens United v. Federal Communications Commission. In preparation for that first oral argument, she jotted down two pages of possible questions. A dogged readiness is essential, she believes.
“What I don’t tolerate is unprepared lawyers,” she said. “Lawyers make the process fair. To be lazy, or not spending time giving your best, is unacceptable to me.”
While the public often jumps to quick conclusions following Supreme Court rulings, there’s a lot of legal nuance happening behind the scenes. “No answer is as clear-cut as you believe it to be,” she said. “You’re reacting to the outcome. We’re reacting to the process.”
Sotomayor voted with the minority in Citizens United. The majority, which included the late associate justice Antonin Scalia, ruled 5-4 that U.S. law couldn’t curb speech by corporations.
Scalia died in February, just months after delivering the 2015 Stein Lecture at the Law School. In her talk, Sotomayor referred to him as “Nino” and talked about how close he was to other justices, including Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and herself.
“Losing him was like losing a member of the family,” she said.
However, Sotomayor and Scalia had giant ideological differences. “There were moments when I wanted to shake him. There were things he said that if I had a baseball bat…” she added, her voice trailing off as audience members shook with laughter.
She later turned serious on the topic of political divisiveness. “We better get to know each other better,” Sotomayor said. “Because if we don’t figure out how to live together, we’re going to continue to be in a kind of warfare.”
Asked about being the first Latina appointed to the Supreme Court, Sotomayor said, “I am a justice for everyone. I don’t look at it through the lens of being a Hispanic. I look at you as a person, not as part of a group in society. What has taken my breath away is the emotion of Latinos. It’s a source of pride that gives me hope.”
Created by Professor Robert Stein (’61), the Stein Lecture series features talks by prominent judges, lawyers, and government officials on a topic of national or international interest. Past speakers include U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Vice President Walter F. Mondale (’56).
