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Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor Essay

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Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor Essay
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Maria Sotomayor
1954 –

Justice Sotomayor was nominated by President Barack Obama to the Supreme Court on May 26, 2009. A vacancy became open upon the retirement of Justice Souter. If her nomination and approval by the Senate is approved, she would become the 111th Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Her confirmation hearing by the Senate did not go without controversy. Justice Sotomayor gave a speech at the University of California, Berkeley and in her speech, she said, “I would hope that a wise Latina Woman with richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Some, including commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, view this statement as being racist. She acknowledged the phrase, “wise Latina woman” was a bad attempt to playing on words. In the end, Justice Sotomayer was confirmed by a vote of 68-31. Justice Sotomayor life is one that is full of achievement and disappointment. Her appointment has changed the landscape from of the court.

Sotomayor
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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber who has the potential to change the direction of the court. Nearly all of them acknowledged that Sotomayor is a presumptive front-runner, but nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal

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