Obama Nominates Sotomayor for Supreme Court
President Barack Obama today nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to succeed David Souter as an associate justice of the Supreme Court. Obama said Sotomayor has more experience as a judge than any current member of the high court had when nominated, adding she has earned the “respect of colleagues on the bench, the admiration of many lawyers who argue cases in her court and the adoration of her clerks, who look to her as a mentor.”
She would be the first Latina to serve on the Supreme Court.
The following is a backgrounder issued by the White House:
Sonia Sotomayor has served as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit since October 1998. She has been hailed as “one of the ablest federal judges currently sitting” for her thoughtful opinions,i and as “a role model of aspiration, discipline, commitment, intellectual prowess and integrity”ii for her ascent to the federal bench from an upbringing in a South Bronx housing project.
Her American story and three decade career in nearly every aspect of the law provide Judge Sotomayor with unique qualifications to be the next Supreme Court Justice. She is a distinguished graduate of two of America’s leading universities. She has been a big-city prosecutor and a corporate litigator. Before she was promoted to the Second Circuit by President Clinton, she was appointed to the District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H.W. Bush. She replaces Justice Souter as the only Justice with experience as a trial judge.
Judge Sotomayor served 11 years on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, one of the most demanding circuits in the country, and has handed down decisions on a range of complex legal and constitutional issues. If confirmed, Sotomayor would bring more federal judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice in 100 years, and more overall judicial experience than anyone confirmed for the Court in the past 70 years. Judge Richard C. Wesley, a George W. Bush appointee to the Second Circuit, said “Sonia is an outstanding colleague with a keen legal mind. She brings a wealth of knowledge and hard work to all her endeavors on our court. It is both a pleasure and an honor to serve with her.”
In addition to her distinguished judicial service, Judge Sotomayor is a Lecturer at Columbia University Law School and was also an adjunct professor at New York University Law School until 2007.
An American Story
Judge Sonia Sotomayor has lived the American dream. Born to a Puerto Rican family, she grew up in a public housing project in the South Bronx. Her parents moved to New York during World War II – her mother served in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps during the war. Her father, a factory worker with a third-grade education, died when Sotomayor was nine years old. Her mother, a nurse, then raised Sotomayor and her younger brother, Juan, now a physician in Syracuse. After her father’s death, Sotomayor turned to books for solace, and it was her new found love of Nancy Drew that inspired a love of reading and learning, a path that ultimately led her to the law.
Most importantly, at an early age, her mother instilled in Sotomayor and her brother a belief in the power of education. Driven by an indefatigable work ethic, and rising to the challenge of managing a diagnosis of juvenile diabetes, Sotomayor excelled in school. Sotomayor graduated as valedictorian of her class at Blessed Sacrament and at Cardinal Spellman High School in New York. She first heard about the Ivy League from her high school debate coach, Ken Moy, who attended Princeton University, and she soon followed in his footsteps after winning a scholarship.
At Princeton, she continued to excel, graduating summa cum laude, and Phi Beta Kappa. She was a co-recipient of the M. Taylor Pyne Prize, the highest honor Princeton awards to an undergraduate. At Yale Law School, Judge Sotomayor served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and as managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order. One of Sotomayor’s former Yale Law School classmates, Robert Klonoff (now Dean of Lewis & Clark Law School), remembers her intellectual toughness from law school: “She would stand up for herself and not be intimidated by anyone.” [Washington Post, 5/7/09]
A Champion of the Law
Over a distinguished career that spans three decades, Judge Sotomayor has worked at almost every level of our judicial system – yielding a depth of experience and a breadth of perspectives that will be invaluable – and is currently not represented — on our highest court. New York City District Attorney Morgenthau recently praised Sotomayor as an “able champion of the law” who would be “highly qualified for any position in which wisdom, intelligence, collegiality and good character could be assets.” [Wall Street Journal, 5/9/09]
A Fearless and Effective Prosecutor
Fresh out of Yale Law School, Judge Sotomayor became an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan in 1979, where she tried dozens of criminal cases over five years. Spending nearly every day in the court room, her prosecutorial work typically involved “street crimes,” such as murders and robberies, as well as child abuse, police misconduct, and fraud cases. Robert Morgenthau, the person who hired Judge Sotomayor, has described her as a “fearless and effective prosecutor.” [Wall Street Journal, 5/9/09] She was cocounsel in the “Tarzan Murderer” case, which convicted a murderer to 67 and ½ years to life in prison, and was sole counsel in a multiple-defendant case involving a Manhattan housing project shooting between rival family groups.
A Corporate Litigator
She entered private practice in 1984, becoming a partner in 1988 at the firm Pavia and Harcourt. She was a general civil litigator involved in all facets of commercial work including, real estate, employment, banking, contracts, and agency law. In addition, her practice had a significant concentration in intellectual property law, including trademark, copyright and unfair competition issues. Her typical clients were significant corporations doing international business. The managing partner who hired her, George Pavia, remembers being instantly impressed with the young Sonia Sotomayor when he hired her in 1984, noting that “she was just ideal for us in terms of her background and training.” [Washington Post, May 7, 2009]
A Sharp and Fearless Trial Judge
Her judicial service began in October 1992 with her appointment to the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by President George H.W. Bush. Still in her 30s, she was the youngest member of the court. From 1992 to 1998, she presided over roughly 450 cases. As a trial judge, she earned a reputation as a sharp and fearless jurist who does not let powerful interests bully her into departing from the rule of law. In 1995, for example, she issued an injunction against Major League Baseball owners, effectively ending a baseball strike that had become the longest work stoppage in professional sports history and had caused the cancellation of the World Series the previous fall. She was widely lauded for saving baseball. Claude Lewis of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that by saving the season, Judge Sotomayor joined “the ranks of Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams.”
A Tough, Fair and Thoughtful Jurist
President Clinton appointed Judge Sotomayor to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1998. She is the first Latina to serve on that court, and has participated in over 3000 panel decisions, authoring roughly 400 published opinions. Sitting on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has tackled a range of questions: from difficult issues of constitutional law, to complex procedural matters, to lawsuits involving complicated business organizations. In this context, Sotomayor is widely admired as a judge with a sophisticated grasp of legal doctrine. “’She appreciates the complexity of issues,’ said Stephen L. Carter, a Yale professor who teaches some of her opinions in his classes. Confronted with a tough case, Carter said, ‘she doesn’t leap at its throat but reasons to get to the bottom of issues.’” For example, in United States v. Quattrone, Judge Sotomayor concluded that the trial judge had erred by forbidding the release of jurors’ names to the press, concluding after carefully weighing the competing concerns that the trial judge’s concerns for a speedy and orderly trial must give way to the constitutional freedoms of speech and the press.
Sotomayor also has keen awareness of the law’s impact on everyday life. Active in oral arguments, she works tirelessly to probe both the factual details and the legal doctrines in the cases before her and to arrive at decisions that are faithful to both. She understands that upholding the rule of law means going beyond legal theory to ensure consistent, fair, common-sense application of the law to real-world facts. For example, In United States v. Reimer, Judge Sotomayor wrote an opinion revoking the US citizenship for a man charged with working for the Nazis in World War II Poland, guarding concentration camps and helping empty the Jewish ghettos. And in Lin v. Gonzales and a series of similar cases, she ordered renewed consideration of the asylum claims of Chinese women who experienced or were threatened with forced birth control, evincing in her opinions a keen awareness of those women’s plights.
Judge Sotomayor’s appreciation of the real-world implications of judicial rulings is paralleled by her sensible practicality in evaluating the actions of law enforcement officers. For example, in United States v. Falso, the defendant was convicted of possessing child pornography after FBI agents searched his home with a warrant. The warrant should not have been issued, but the agents did not know that, and Judge Sotomayor wrote for the court that the officers’ good faith justified using the evidence they found. Similarly in United States v. Santa, Judge Sotomayor ruled that when police search a suspect based on a mistaken belief that there is a valid arrest warrant out on him, evidence found during the search should not be suppressed. Ten years later, in Herring v. United States, the Supreme Court reached the same conclusion. In her 1997 confirmation hearing, Sotomayor spoke of her judicial philosophy, saying” I don’t believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstance. It says what it says. We should do honor to it.” Her record on the Second Circuit holds true to that statement. For example, in Hankins v. Lyght, she argued in dissent that the federal government risks “an unconstitutional trespass” if it attempts to dictate to religious organizations who they can or cannot hire or dismiss as spiritual leaders. Since joining the Second Circuit, Sotomayor has honored the Constitution, the rule of law, and justice, often forging consensus and winning conservative colleagues to her point of view.
A Commitment to Community
Judge Sotomayor is deeply committed to her family, to her co-workers, and to her community. Judge Sotomayor is a doting aunt to her brother Juan’s three children and an attentive godmother to five more. She still speaks to her mother, who now lives in Florida, every day. At the courthouse, Judge Sotomayor helped found the collegiality committee to foster stronger personal relationships among members of the court. Seizing an opportunity to lead others on the path to success, she recruited judges to join her in inviting young women to the courthouse on Take Your Daughter to Work Day, and mentors young students from troubled neighborhoods Her favorite project, however, is the Development School for Youth program, which sponsors workshops for inner city high school students. Every semester, approximately 70 students attend 16 weekly workshops that are designed to teach them how to function in a work setting. The workshop leaders include investment bankers, corporate executives and Judge Sotomayor, who conducts a workshop on the law for 25 to 35 students. She uses as her vehicle the trial of Goldilocks and recruits six lawyers to help her. The students play various roles, including the parts of the prosecutor, the defense attorney, Goldilocks and the jurors, and in the process they get to experience openings, closings, direct and cross-examinations. In addition to the workshop experience, each student is offered a summer job by one of the corporate sponsors. The experience is rewarding for the lawyers and exciting for the students, commented Judge Sotomayor, as “it opens up possibilities that the students never dreamed of before.” [Federal Bar Council News, Sept./Oct./Nov. 2005, p.20] This is one of many ways that Judge Sotomayor gives back to her community and inspires young people to achieve their dreams.
She has served as a member of the Second Circuit Task Force on Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts and was formerly on the Boards of Directors of the New York Mortgage Agency, the New York City Campaign Finance Board, and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund.
Kellogg Foundation Awards Equal Justice Society Three-Year Grant
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has awarded the Equal Justice Society (EJS) a $1 million, three-year grant to support the organization’s ongoing efforts to address structural racial inequities, restore equal protection jurisprudence and help build a public platform - a “Grand Alliance” - for the racial justice advocacy movement.
EJS is a national strategy group heightening consciousness on race in the law and popular discourse. Employing strategies including law and public policy advocacy, cross-disciplinary convenings and strategic public communications, EJS seeks to restore race equity issues to the national consciousness, strengthen progressive alliances, and advance the discourse on the positive role of government.
The Kellogg Foundation grant will enhance EJS’s capacity in two key areas: improving the understanding and consideration of race in the law to minimize or remove barriers to equal opportunity; and fostering a “Grand Alliance” that encompasses a wide range of individuals, organizations and movements working together to achieve common goals and a collective vision.
“We are deeply grateful for the Kellogg Foundation’s generosity and its recognition of our work to move us closer to a society where race is no longer a barrier to opportunity,” said Eva Paterson, EJS co-founder and president. “EJS can now more aggressively pursue initiatives that have a long-term impact on the progressive and racial justice movements.”
EJS is one of the few institutions with an explicit focus on overturning barriers to implementing the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and antidiscrimination legislation. We are dedicated to redefining the “Equal Protection” clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in order to redress and prevent present-day forms of bias and discrimination.
Our legal strategy aims to broaden conceptions of present-day discrimination by redefining the legal understanding of discrimination and how it operates. Our theory of changing the law relies upon real-life experiences of race and racial discrimination, and is supported by scientific evidence regarding the process and operation of discrimination at multiple levels, including the individual, institutional and structural. Because contemporary discrimination is frequently structural in nature, unconscious, or hidden beneath alternative excuses for a decision maker’s behavior (despite the fact that a tangible harm has resulted from their actions), the showing of “intent,” as required under current Equal Protection doctrine, becomes a near impossible burden to meet.
Moreover, the notion of proving “intent” has started to bleed into areas of law outside equal protection jurisprudence. In recent years, courts have demanded that plaintiffs prove “intent” in education, employment, criminal law and environmental discrimination cases. Thus, protection against any form of discrimination is under attack as long as the “intent” doctrine remains in place.
In developing a progressive vision of the law and of justice, we must acknowledge the interconnectedness between various issues, struggles and constituencies. This philosophy is the basis of EJS’s efforts to build a national “Grand Alliance.”
A Grand Alliance will create a culture of, and infrastructure for, engaging in cross-silo organizing and strategizing, educating our allies and ourselves - and supporting each other during difficult periods. Today’s civil rights movement must coalesce diverse communities and achieve a broad-based advocacy agenda inclusive of issues such as equal opportunity, marriage equality, and progressive immigration reform.
EJS has a proud tradition of reaching out to marginalized communities and advocating on behalf of social justice issues that have not always fallen under the civil rights umbrella.
EJS will continue supporting legal action to overturn California Proposition 8 and strengthen alliances between the African American and LGBT communities. We will also continue participating in strategic convenings on marriage equality, racial justice, and other intersecting issues. Likewise, EJS will continue supporting the immigrants’ rights movement by helping advance a progressive immigrant integration platform as well as strengthen support for immigrants’ rights from the civil rights, legal, and African American communities.
The Kellogg Foundation grant provides $200,000 to be applied in the first two years and $600,000 in the third and final year.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930. The organization supports children, families and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society. Grants are concentrated in the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the southern African countries of Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. For further information, please visit the Foundation’s website at www.wkkf.org.
Tanene Allison: Follow the Artists to Our New Democracy
EJS has been fortunate to work with Tanene Allison on the past, especially when she worked for the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights. The topic of dissent and the role of artists in helping us more towards a new and improved American democracy is something that resonates with our work. This was originally published Apr. 1 on The Huffington Post.
“Why am I compelled to write?… Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it.” - Gloria Anzaldua
I have been thinking a lot about the role of artists and writers in this new era of our American democracy. As we emerge from an eight year period where any form of dissent was inherently labeled “un-American,” you can feel our country struggle to regain its footing around how best to move forward. Newspapers are shutting down at a rate previously unseen and everything about how we think and get our information is shifting in ways that requires creative thinking and a visionary ability to see things that have never yet be.
O, let America be America again — The land that never has been yet –
And yet must be — the land where every man is free.
- Langston Hughes
Calif. Appellate Court Upholds Promoting Diversity in Schools
Yesterday marked an important victory for advocates of school diversity and equal opportunity. A California Court of Appeals ruled that Berkeley Unified School District’s policy of taking neighborhood demographics into account when making school assignments is not discriminatory as alleged by challengers.
The Court concluded that the District’s plan “does not show partiality, prejudice or preference to any student on the basis of that student’s race,” and that “the particular policy challenged here…is not discriminatory.” Therefore, the plan does not violate Proposition 209, California’s anti-affirmative action initiative passed in 1996.
In arriving at its decision, the court invoked the continuing legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, and affirmed the ability of school districts to develop and implement affirmative policies that foster social diversity and inclusion in their schools.
Honolulu Advertiser: ‘More join ceded lands fight’
Honolulu Advertiser reporter Gordon Pang mentions EJS and JACL in his roundup of amicus briefs filed with the Supreme Court in the case involving lands held in trust for Native Hawaiians.
Because the U.S. has admitted that the 1893 overthrow was illegal, “the ceded lands hold unique cultural, spiritual and political significance for the Native Hawaiian people — they are not fungible or replaceable,” said the brief filed on behalf of the Equal Justice Society and Japanese American Citizens League.
Read the announcement of our brief here.
Eva Paterson: ABC7 Story on Ledbetter Act
Eva Paterson is included in a story by ABC7’s Mark Matthews on President Obama’s signing of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which will make it easier for people to get the pay they deserve — regardless of their gender, race, or age. The Act was introduced by Bay Area Congressman George Miller.
Greenlining Institute Report: UC Medical School Failing to Keep up with California’s Diversity
The Greenlining Institute, a multiethnic research and advocacy institute, on Thursday released a report on the diversity of the University of California’s medical student body. Among the findings: although African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans make up more than 40 percent of the population of California, they comprise less than 20 percent of UC medical students. [Thanks to Hector Preciado for sharing this news with us.]
The Greenlining report analyzes official enrollment data from the University of California Office of the President, which shows the number of applicants, accepted students, and enrollees at each of the five UC medical school campuses of each race, from 2001-2007.
To access the report online, follow http://greenlining.org/documents/view/217.
