Contrasts with court transcend ethnicity

Sotomayor will bring a host of different experiences to bench

By David G. Savage Tribune Newspapers
August 7, 2009
WASHINGTON - -- Justice Sonia Sotomayor will bring something new and different to the Supreme Court, beyond the fact that she will be its first Latina. Her background and experiences undoubtedly will affect her thinking and influence her decisions, but they are likely to do so in ways that were hardly mentioned during the Senate fight over her confirmation.She will be the only justice whose first language was not English. She will join a court that oversees a federal law that calls for equal opportunity in schools for children who do not speak English.She has had diabetes since childhood, a medical condition that is classified as a disability under federal law. Disabled-rights advocates have suffered 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. She was raised in a housing project where drugs and crime were more common than 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 graduating with highest honors.She will "change the conversation on affirmative action" within the court, said 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 divorced with no children but has a close relationship with an extended family. "She is a modern woman with a nontraditional family," said Sylvia Lazos, a University of Nevada at Las Vegas law professor. "She is much more reflective of contemporary American society than the other justices like (Samuel) Alito and (John) Roberts." Even her personal finances look more like contemporary America compared with those of her new and wealthier colleagues at the high court. Friends say Sotomayor has struggled to pay her mortgage and credit card bills, and her financial disclosures show she has no substantial savings or stock portfolio.Before she was a judge, she served on a New York board that enforced the city's campaign finance laws, but she will be joining a court whose conservative justices are skeptical of limiting the role of money in politics. And unlike any other current justice, she has both tried cases as a prosecutor and presided over trials as judge. Friends say those experiences have given her an up-close look at how the criminal justice system works. By contrast, most of the justices have spent their careers as law professors, government lawyers and appellate judges. "She is intensely focused on the facts, not the ideology," said Los Angeles lawyer Nancy Gray, who worked with Sotomayor as a prosecutor in New York. Until now, most of the debate involving Sotomayor has focused on her ethnicity and sex. The impact of those aspects of her background may be subtle, many lawyers say, but could influence her fellow justices.After Justice Thurgood Marshall retired, several justices wrote that the first African-American justice had a powerful influence through the stories he told in their private conferences.

As a young lawyer, he traveled throughout the South to represent black defendants who often faced a white prosecutor, white judge and all-white jury. If his white colleagues had not thought much about how race could infect the criminal justice system, Marshall made sure they understood. No one suggests Sotomayor will transform justices' views. But on issues such as Immigration, drugs, sentencing and sex discrimination, Sotomayor is likely to bring a fresh perspective to the court's debates.Her first major case, due to be heard Sept. 9, will decide the constitutionality of part of the McCain-Feingold Act that forbids the broadcast of corporate-funded campaign ads. This week, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., co-sponsor of the law, voted against Sotomayor because, he said, she was not a "believer in judicial restraint." But the newly confirmed justice is more likely to uphold his measure than her more conservative colleagues whom McCain supported, including Roberts and Alito.
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