Sotomayor, << soh toh my AWR, >> Sonia (1954-…), became an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in 2009. President Barack Obama named her to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice David Souter. Sotomayor became the first Hispanic American to serve on the court. Prior to her appointment, Sotomayor served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She had previously worked as a U.S. district court judge.
Sonia Maria Sotomayor was born on June 25, 1954, in the Bronx section of New York City. Her parents had moved there from Puerto Rico. Her family lived in a public housing project when she was a child. She received a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University in 1976 and a J.D. degree from Yale Law School in 1979. She also served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.
After graduation, Sotomayor served as an assistant district attorney in New York City and later as a lawyer in private practice. In 1992, she became a judge for the U.S. District Court in New York’s Southern District. In that position, Sotomayor gained national recognition in 1995 for helping end the major league baseball strike, ruling in favor of the players over team owners. She was appointed a federal appeals court judge in 1998.
Sotomayor’s memoir, My Beloved World, was published in 2013. In 2018, two of her autobiographical works for young readers were published. Turning Pages is a book for young children, and The Beloved World of Sonia Sotomayor was written for older children. In the book Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You (2019), Sotomayor used her own experience of developing juvenile diabetes at age 7 to suggest how children faced with challenges can work together to form a community.
