Acknowledging the pivotal nature of her ruling, Sotomayor described how it is “when you see an outfielder backpedaling and jumping up to the wall and time stops for an instant as he jumps up and you finally figure out whether it’s a home run, a double or a single off the wall or an out.” Then she scolded the owners for unfair labor practices and urged lawyers for both sides to salvage the 1995 season, reach a new labor agreement and change their attitudes.
It was classic Sotomayor. She embraces the dramatic moment as well as any of the roughly 80 judges in the lower Manhattan courthouse that has been her home since her appointment to the bench in 1992 by former US president George H.W. Bush.
As a district judge, she advanced constitutional religious rights claims by tossing out a state prison rule banning members of a religious sect from wearing colored beads to ward off evil spirits, and by rejecting a suburban law preventing the display of a 2.7m-high menorah in a park.
Sotomayor, who has a brother who became a doctor, presided over a civil trial in 1996 in which the family of a lawyer who died from AIDS sued the makers of the movie Philadelphia, contending that Hollywood stole their story. The case was settled, but not before the movie with its dramatic courtroom showdowns was played for the jury in its entirety, prompting Sotomayor to caution: “I don’t expect melodrama here. I don’t want anybody aspiring to what they see on the screen.” Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, then became an editor of the Yale Law Journal at Yale Law School. She joined the Manhattan district attorney’s office and the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
“She is a brilliant person whose intellect is only overshadowed by her humility, which stems from her being an ordinary person. She’s an ordinary American,” said Carlos Ortiz, the chairman of the Supreme Court Committee in the Hispanic National Bar Association.
“I believe that not only Hispanics but all Americans and people around the world will after this day be more proud and respectful of the United States of America than they have ever been. That’s how significant this is.”
Jon O. Newman, a senior judge on the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals and a former chief judge, said the appointment was the culmination of “the American dream of sheer talent triumphing and being rewarded.” He added: “She’s overcome adversity growing up and made herself an enormous success based on talent and strength of character. And that’s the American dream.”
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