Biography

June 25, 1954 · Bronx, New York City, New York, USA

Sonia Maria Sotomayor

Sworn in as the first Latina/Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court member on 8 August 2009. She is the 111th associate Supreme Court justice and the third woman to join the court.

Her parents were migrants from Puerto Rico who relocated to New York City in search of a better life.

(May 10, 2010) Merited a position in Time magazine's - The 100 Most Influential People in the World ("Thinkers" category) - with an homage contributed by New York Senator Chuck Schumer.

Daughter of Celina Sotomayor.

I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.

When I'm concentrating, I can be fixed in place for hours. In fact, there was a joke in my office that everybody would come and chat outside my door because they knew - no matter how loud they talked - if I was concentrating, it would not disturb me at all.

[on why she wrote 'My Beloved World', her autobiography] I realized that people had an unreal image of me, that somehow I was a god on Mount Olympus. I decided that if I were going to make use of my role as a Supreme Court Justice, it would be to inspire people to realize that, first, I was just like them and second, if I could do it, so could they.

In the world I grew up in, if you were poor and had a bunch of kids in the house - which everybody did - nothing you bought was ever going to stay pure, and the only way to do it was to put plastic on [the couch] to protect it.

Sometimes, idealistic people are put off the whole business of networking as something tainted by flattery and the pursuit of selfish advantage. But virtue in obscurity is rewarded only in heaven. To succeed in this world you have to be known to people.