Sonia Sotomayor Sonia Sotomayor Sonia Maria Sotomayor (; born June 25, 1954) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, appointed by President Barack Obama in May 2009 and confirmed in August 2009. She has the distinction of being its first justice of Hispanic descent and the first Latina. Sotomayor was born in The Bronx, New York City, to Puerto Rican-born parents. Her father died when she was nine, and she was subsequently raised by her mother. Sotomayor graduated "summa cum laude" from Princeton University in 1976 and received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where
Sonia Sotomayor and for running a "hot bench", where judges ask lawyers plenty of questions. Unprepared lawyers suffered the consequences, but the vigorous questioning was an aid to lawyers seeking to tailor their arguments to the judge's concerns. The 2009 "Almanac of the Federal Judiciary", which collected anonymous evaluations of judges by lawyers who appear before them, contained a wide range of reactions to Sotomayor. Comments also diverged among lawyers willing to be named. Attorney Sheema Chaudhry said, "She's brilliant and she's qualified, but I just feel that she can be very, how do you say, temperamental." Defense lawyer Gerald B. Lefcourt