Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. The seat was filled by Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr. of the Third Circuit. Since Barack Obama's election, there had been speculation that Sotomayor could be a leading candidate for the Supreme Court seat of Justice David Souter, or for any opening on the Court during Obama's term. On April 9, 2009, Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand wrote a joint letter to President Obama urging him to appoint Sotomayor, or alternatively Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, to the Supreme Court if a vacancy should arise on the Court during his term.<ref name="Schumer/Gillibrand"></ref> On April 30,
Sonia Sotomayor which issued rulings on student infractions. She also ran an after-school program for local children and volunteered as an interpreter for Latino patients at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital. A history major, Sotomayor received almost all A's in her final two years of college. Sotomayor wrote her senior thesis at Princeton on Luis Muñoz Marín, the first democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico, and on the territory's struggles for economic and political self-determination. The 178-page work, "La Historia Ciclica de Puerto Rico: The Impact of the Life of Luis Muñoz Marin on the Political and Economic History of Puerto Rico, 1930–1975", won