Talk:Sonia Sotomayor

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This page has been mentioned by media organizations. The mentions are in: Marty Kaplan (26 May 2009). "Sonia's Wiki Wonder". Huffington Post.

Jurisprudence section

POV fluff? LeoO3 14:49, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree. That had to go.--Smashingworth 07:38, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

If someone's curious, this is what the article looked like at the time that first 2005 comment was made. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:38, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Doctor of Laws from Princeton

I find it hard to believe that she received a Doctor of Laws from Princeton when there is no law school there. Where is the source? [10:46, April 1, 2007 76.80.130.214]

Looks like it's true. I guess when it's an honorary degree you can call it whatever you want. Josh (talk) 17:11, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a little off topic for this section, but education-related. I can't post this because of the protection on the article, but according to Sotomayor her undergrad degree was in History. If you think it's relevant and can post, feel free. Lamfr (talk) 16:40, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Political centrist?

Although a liberal Democrat or a liberal newspaper such as the New York Times may describe Sotomayor as a "political centrist," she is not viewed as such by conservatives. See Ed Whelan's evaluation of her in the National Review:

Highlighting the emphasis on diversity over quality in judicial selection, Justice Scalia has joked that “the next nominee to the Court will be a female Protestant Hispanic”. Second Circuit judge Sonia Sotomayor fits at least two-thirds of the description. Plus, she’s acquired a reputation as a very liberal judge. For these reasons, she’s widely mentioned as a leading Supreme Court candidate in an Obama administration.

User:BoBo 00:59, November 27, 2008

I'm sorry, but there is widespread support in numerous solid, well-respected publications for the proposition that Sotomayor is widely considered a political centrist. The article already reflects that conservative activists call her a "liberal activist" etc., which is what conservative activists call nearly all Democratic judges. The blog post cited above from the National Review, a conservative magazine, by Ed Whelan, a right-wing lawyer, only confirms that she is a judge whom some conservative activists attack as liberal, a fact that is already present in the article. Thus, I am putting this proposition back in the article. However, as a concession, since the commenter above seems to think the New York Times is too biased a source (which, I would point out, is not consistent with usual wiki norms on this kind of issue), I'll footnote her centrist reputation instead to multiple additional sources. I'll cite the American Bar Association Journal, Cox Newspapers, _and_ the New York Times. The American Bar Association Journal alone should suffice to support this point. (Unless you are one of these wiki editors who thinks all sources are biased except partisan magazines that share your point of view.) Also, I would like to note that there is plenty of content in this article that comes from the National Review and other conservative magazines (from the supposed 'controversy' around Trent Lott calling her nomination to a vote, to the size of Senator Moynihan's role in her district court nomination, and on throughout the article); meanwhile there is NO content in this article that is sourced only to liberal or progressive magazines. Please do not remove well-sourced propositions regarding something as straightfoward as the fact that many publications have termed her a "centrist," using that word, merely because a right-wing lawyer on the National Review's blog takes another point of view that is already reflected in the article. --JRtx (talk) 19:04, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

How come there is no information on her religion or on her position on abortion, or capital punishment for that matter...which all seem like substantial information? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Krystalkeep (talk • contribs) 23:01, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The article said, "Bush appointed liberal Sotomayor in a deal that allowed a conservative judge to be appointed as well." Since the articles cites 16 sources that say she's a centrist, I changed the world "liberal" in that sentence to "centrist." Grundle2600 (talk) 13:53, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Her own words prove that the "centrist" tag is laughable. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” — Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001 208.127.106.165 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:24, 26 May 2009 (UTC).

Reactionary periodicals like National Review (and make no mistake about their leanings) would consider John McCain a centrist, and Ronald Reagan (if it weren't for their considering him their patron saint) a liberal. Hbquikcomjamesl (talk) 16:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Examining the cited publications, they are mostly uniformly solid publications of the left. The New York Times, the Journal of the ABA, and the Huffington Post. These are all credible publications, but their view of the "centre" is no more accurate than that of the National Review. They are not NPOV. Indeed, the description of the National Review (a conservative magazine) as "reactionary" is interesting. Good grief. This is a mainstream conservative publication; I disagree with many things they say, but this view is very far from NPOV, and about as silly as describing the NY Times as a "revolutionary" paper, or a "far left" paper. I myself changed the wording to "moderate" rather than centrist. I think a much stronger case can be made for this. Centrist simply doesn't seem to fit. Holmwood (talk) 16:21, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

It is absurd in today's enviorment to expect any kind of objective source on whether a supreme court nominee is "liberal" or "moderate". Best to remove any attempt to label it one way or the other. This is especially true given the seriously flawed nature of many of the references cited for her being a "centrist". Check the dates - many are 10 years old. You could find sources that say David Souter is a moderate, if you looked at sources from years before his nomination. Just note the debate - something like "Democrats claim she is a centrist who respects the limits of the judicial role while republicans argue she is a liberal activist." Throw in some cites if you like. But please, only fairly recent ones - her judicial record 10 years ago isn't going to lead to very informed opinions. JaxElls (talk) 04:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

simple challenge on "unbiased sources" Name one Supreme Court nominee that the New York Times has labeled "leftist". 208.127.106.165 (talk) 16:41, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree, to label her as centrist and then link spam a bunch of left-leaning sources to back up the claim is disingenious. I suggest either adding support that lists her as liberal or removing the qualifiers alltogether. Arzel (talk) 18:32, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't think there is uniform agreement that she is a centrist, regardless of what she really is. It's going to be something that people want to read about, so we should say "the NYT, ABA,... describe her as a centrist, while Fox News, ... describe her as a liberal". Then people can make up their own mind. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 21:09, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

AP article says "In general, her rulings as a trial judge for six years and then as an appeals court judge since 1998 are in line with the liberal-leaning views of Justice David Souter, the man President Barack Obama has nominated her to replace."http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gFtUIX7x5MF3yejKGGXY_diC2pSgD98E6QA00 hard to say that AP is a conservative viewpoint.38.117.213.19 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC).

I've added to the article a detailed explanation of the 1991-92 nomination process, Moynihan's role, etc. It does seem that she was regarded as a centrist at that time. While GHWB's views of her aren't reliably known, she was enthusiastically backed by Republican Al D'Amato, even though she was Moynihan's pick. She was blocked for a while before her full unanimous confirmation, but that was a Senate politicking retaliation measure that had nothing to do with her per se. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:22, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Bot-created subpage

A temporary subpage at User:Polbot/fjc/Sonia Sotomayor was automatically created by a perl script, based on this article at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges. The subpage should either be merged into this article, or moved and disambiguated. Polbot (talk) 21:19, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Cardozo

There seems to be a minor, and rather silly, edit war going on regarding whether Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic or Latino/Latina justice on the Supreme Court, if nominated. Some wish to insert the argument onto Sotomayor's wikipedia page that Benjamin Cardozo was actually the first Hispanic justice. This argument seems extremely remote and implausible based on available information. Cardozo and his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents (and great-great-grandparents and so on for a few more generations!) seem to have been born in the United States, and none of them spoke Spanish or Ladino or had any discernible connection to Hispanic or Latino/Latina culture or ethnicity as those terms are defined today. Rather, Cardozo is decended from Portuguese Jews who left Portugal, lived in the Netherlands, and then in England, before finally settling in British North America in the 1740s and 1750s. This is a pretty thin basis for calling him Hispanic. It is not even clear whether current Portuguese-Americans are considered Hispanic, let alone the descendants, many generations later, of members of the Portuguese Sephardic Jewish community who did not even immigrate to America directly from Portugal, and certainly had no connection to Spain or Latin America.

My first choice would be to just omit entirely this discussion of Cardozo, which I don't think is germane or plausible, and state that Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic Justice. As a second alternative, one could state that she would be the first Latino/Latina justice (instead of "Hispanic") -- since nobody has argued or could plausibly argue that Cardozo was a Latino. As a third choice, we can keep it the way it is, with an unqualified sentence stating that Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic justice, followed by a brief discussion of the Cardozo theory.

Any views on this question? 130.132.165.162 (talk) 00:43, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Somebody seems to have kicked the Cardozo thing into a footnote. That seems about right to me. 71.234.233.60 (talk) 01:59, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Just because Cardozo did not come from a Latin American country does not mean that he was not Hispanic. As everyone knows, ethnic divisions are somewhat murky at the edges, but the best definition is someone descended from the Iberian Peninsula (which obviously includes Portugal). I will adopt the second suggestion and change the wording to Latino, which is more accurate (see Hispanic and Latino Americans) but there is documentary evidence that Cardozo was Hispanic so the footnote version is not accurate. Papercrab (talk) 22:58, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any reliable sources in Cardozo's article describing him as a Hispanic. Why the controversy here? I'm removing the footnote per WP:UNDUE. --J^mundo 00:58, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

I couldn't find reliable sources for the Cardozo is Hispanic argument, so I'm fine with deleting it (WP:UNDUE). If somebody does find reliable sources for the proposition that Cardozo should count as Hispanic, then they can revive the footnote. In any event I certainly don't think this theory belongs in the text of the article, just as a matter of relevance, given that the subject of the article is Sonia Sotomayor. 71.234.233.60 (talk) 16:43, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

No question Cardozo was Portuguese; the question is 'are Portuguese considered Hospanic?' to negate argument that Sotomayor may be the first Hispanic justice.65.215.94.13 (talk) 19:47, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The current definition of Hispanic from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget does not include Portugal simply because Portuguese as a language *is not Spanish.* Cardozo is also not Latino because he is not from Latin America. Cordozo is Latin. Cordozo was the first Latin member of the Supreme court. If confirmed, Sotomayer will be the first Hispanic and first Latina Supremem Court Justice. This isn't rocket science, folks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by DHLister (talk • contribs) 13:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

That's true, but the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Small Business Administration, in addition to other federal, state, and municipal agencies, do recognize Portuguese under the umbrella term of Hispanic. This discussion has emerged on Daily Kos[1] and elsewhere so I think it is worthy of at least a mention on wikipedia.Sylvain1972 (talk) 14:37, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia policy and predominant practice is not to exclude information just because there's a good argument against that information. Like it or not, the criterion for inclusion is that sources deemed good are including it, whether there are good arguments against it or not. If newspaper reports, NPR broadcasts, and so on are saying Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic justice (and they are), that should be in the Wikipedia entry even if it's false and demonstrably so, because any argument like the above will be deemed original research by the strange standard Wikipedia practices. Similarly, if there are newspaper articles and reputable-enough news stories on cable news with pundits saying Cardozo was the first Hispanic justice (and there are), then that should also go in the Wikipedia article, and the article should mention that some are saying one and some saying the other. Arguments like that above, by the Wikipedia standard, can only appear if they are taken from some published source. So I say put both claims in the article and link to arguments for each. After all, we don't want Wikipedia to be a place where original research goes on, even if that would make more sense. Parableman (talk) 13:19, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Parableman that the media reports Sotomayor as the first Hispanic doesn't make it right when it isn't.(That AP reported Taiwan's Yani Tseng as being South Korean last Sunday, and that article being published at multiple news outlet websites, change that golfer's country of origin?) Hispanic, look up its definition here at Wikipedia, are people from the Iberian Peninsula. Which Portugal clearly is, and the Cardozo name is Portugese. —Preceding unsigned comment added by WilliamJE (talk • contribs) 15:08, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Ancestry.com has a "One World Tree" (subscription) pedigree for Cardozo that says his Great-great-great-great-great grandfather David Nunez Cardozo was born in Portugal in 1640 and died in London 1724. David's grandson Jacob was born in London and emigrated to New York circa 1718. His other recorded Great grandparents had the surnames Hart, Nathan, Seixas, and Levy. Hart was Jewish per [2]. The Benjamin Cardozo article makes no reference to Cardozo being Hispanic. When he joined the Supreme Court, he was thought of as a Jew,or a Sephardic Jew, but no one has furnished any reliable source from his lifetime which called him Hispanic, and it does not seem to be a mainstream view of him. It would be WP:UNDUE weight to call Cardozo "Hispanic" and to call Sotomayor the "Second Hispanic." At this point, that is a fringe theory. Wikipedia is not the espouser of "truth" as determined by fringe theorists, but of what is referenced to reliable sources, and that only in proportion. Edison (talk) 19:56, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The book "Latinos and American Law" (2006)[3] says (p197) that Portuguese are not generally considered Hispanic. He puts claims by "some" that Cardozo was Hispanic in the same dubious consideration as claims that Scalia is Hispanic because he is of Italian descent. A2005 book "Advice and consent" by Lee Epstein and Jeffrey Allan Segal says (p 59) "some" claim Cardozo, (incorrectly said to be "of Spanish descent") was Hispanic . Another 2005 book "The Supreme Court in the American legal system," by Jeffrey Allan Segal et al, also says (p251) that Cardozo was "a Sephardic Jew of Spanish heritage" and wonders why he is not counted as an Hispanic Supreme Court Justice. A very short sentence or two treating on the question of 1st or second Hispanic justice might be appropriate and proportionate. Edison (talk) 20:27, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The blogosphere arguments that she would "not really be the first Hispanic Justice" sound much like the blogosphere arguments that Obama was "not really African American." Might look at how that meme was handled. Edison (talk) 23:28, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The original edit stated that Cardozo was Ibero-American and not Hispanic. Leonardo Alves (talk) 11:45, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Sotomayor is also Ibero-American: "The term includes neither the United States (except for Puerto Rico), nor any of its fifty states...".UGA2001 (talk) 16:12, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Then the Wiki entry for Hispanic needs to be amended as it includes those from Hispania and the Wiki entry for Hispania reads: "Hispania was the name given by the Romans to the whole of the Iberian Peninsula (modern Portugal, Spain, Andorra, Gibraltar and a very small southern part of France)".

Perhaps we should change the entry for Hispanic to read "only those who are less than two generations removed from the region known as Hispania or Central/South America, and Mexico". This will include Sotomayor and exclude Cardozo (it would also exclude a large portion of those in the US who consider themselves Hispanic). Also, it seems the word Latino is being used to try and show an ethnic difference between Sotomayor and Cardozo. The Wiki reference for Latino notes that these are synonyms. There is a lot of cleaning up to do.

UGA2001 (talk) 14:07, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

There seems to be a lot of confusion here. Hispanic has two prevalent meanings: an ancient one (meaning someone from Hispania); a modern one, meaning someone hailing in same way from a Spanish speaking country. The article Hispanic states "Hispanic (Spanish: hispano, hispánico) is a term that historically denoted a relationship to the ancient Hispania (geographically coinciding with the Iberian Peninsula). During the modern era, it took on a more limited meaning, relating to the contemporary nation of Spain. Still more recently, the term is used to describe the culture and people of countries formerly ruled by Spain, usually with a majority of the population having Spanish ancestry and speaking the Spanish language. These include Mexico, the majority of the Central and South American countries, and most of the Greater Antilles. There are also Spanish influences in the African nation of Equatorial Guinea,[1] and the cultures of the Spanish East Indies' nations and territories, the Philippines, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands." So, Hispanic does not generally aplly to Portuguese, whatever some Portuguese-American senator do, or whatever the Federal Transportation Authority decides (unless you all want to say that Cardozo was the first Hispanic judge according to the Federal Transportation Authority...!). He was and American of Sephardi Jewish origin, not an Hispanic. The Ogre (talk) 19:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Sephardic Jews are from the Iberian Peninsula. Those with ancestry in the Iberian Peninsula are Hispanic. Hispania refers to the whole of the Peninsula, not just Spain. Portugal's name is derived from the city name which is something like Portum Calientum (my Latin is not up to par). Go back far enough and Portuguese and Spanish converge. Just avoid the whole issue and refer to Sotomayor as the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, and there's no debate whatsoever. 130.111.163.179 (talk) 19:45, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

You are wrong. Hispanic has a modern meaning which is not related to Hispania, but to Spain and its language. And in the US Hispanic and Latino are the same - see Hispanic and Latino Americans. By the way, are you people aware that most Portuguese would consider it an insult to be called Hispanic? Because for them, as for the Spanish, that means Spanish speaker. The Ogre (talk) 19:50, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I have news for you folks I don't think Sotomayor identifies with Spain, she's a light-skinned Afro-Puerto Rican who likely identifies with rural/provincial aspects of Puerto Rican culture. I don't think she's a Hispanophile, she can't speak Spanish well and has demonstrated difficulty pronouncing her last name as it should correctly be pronounced in Spanish. This doesn't detract from her achievements, I'm just trying to inform people not in the know that she would hardly be embraced as a "sister" or "cousin" by most people in Spain.--72.221.92.43 (talk) 00:09, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

That raises an even more interesting question - does she have African or perhaps Native American ancestry, as many Puerto Ricans do? Under the old "one-drop" rule, if she has identifiable African ancestry, she would be considered black as well. bd2412 T 00:17, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

She would be the third person of significant African descent on court if I'm not mistaken.--72.221.92.43 (talk) 01:27, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Jurisprudence, really

I would guess that since she has been a judge for some eighteen years now, she might have, oh, I don't know, ruled on some cases? Rather than prescribing whether she is a "liberal" or a "conservative" based on what newspapers and bloggers say, how about we find out how she has actually ruled in cases that have come before her court? bd2412 T 23:50, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest Editing...

User:JRtx has basically edited major portions of this article and has engaged in argument about the article on the article's talk page. (see above). The User's contributions appear to be nearly solely on this article also. There is a strong possibility that this user might be Judge Sotomeier herself. In any case, this user's edits should be watched closely. Yardleyman (talk) 23:30, 8 May 2009 (UTC)

Please assume good faith. This article is edited and "watched" by several editors. You are making strong allegations about Sotomayor, remember that WP:BLP is clear about adding contentious material to biographical articles. --J^mundo 04:10, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Unless Yardleyman has further evidence of COI the tag should be removed. Mere suspicion isn't sufficient.   Will Beback  talk  05:19, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Highly unlikely that someone with the workload of a federal appellate judge would be spending much time editing their own Wikipedia article. Much more likely to be a mere partisan. bd2412 T 19:31, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Note that Yardleyman was subsequently blocked as a sock. JRtx has a sporadic editing history that predates his/her first edit on this article by two years. Chance that Sotomayor edits this article herself is zero! Really successful people don't do WP editing ;-) Wasted Time R (talk) 11:48, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Father: Occupation and Education

Sotomayor's father's occupation has been variously reported by print news sources as: manual laborer, factory worker, and tool-and die maker. Definitely possible that all three were true at various times, but we need to resolve the discrepancy or remove the info about occupation. Also, it seems unlikely that a tool-and-die maker truly had a "third grade education." This highly-skilled occupation typically requires math skills well above the primary school level as well as a 4-5 year apprenticeship. Someone who left school after third grade but then acquires additional education does not have a "third grade education." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.13.48.8 (talk) 22:21, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

This New York Times profile from 1992 - http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/25/news/a-breakthrough-judge-what-she-always-wanted.html?&pagewanted=all - seems to be the source for "tool-and-dye worker with a third grade education." You are right that various other sources have said factory worker, manual laborer, etc. 71.234.233.60 (talk) 20:34, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

So, teach the controversy. Report everything and note the disparity that exists, to the extent that it does, unless one source or another is proven wrong. bd2412 T 19:32, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Puerto Ricans are NOT IMMIGRANTS

That's like saying Barack Obama was born in Hawaii to Kansas immigrants. Scarykitty (talk) 12:16, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree, the New York Times recently issued a correction on this matter. see the bottom of this page. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/15sotomayor.html?_r=3 71.113.252.54 (talk) 14:48, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Puerto Rico is a commonwealth and not a state. Puerto Rican's are immigrants my brother. Its like saying someone was born in California to Guam immigrants. Puerto Rican's have the choice every so often to become a state, a nation or remain a commonwealth. Por favor, lea mi hermano. CashRules (talk) 16:21, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Wrong, Puerto Ricans are NOT immigrant...period period period!!! My dad was born in Puerto Rico and came here, skipped customs and immigration, and has NEVER held any green card, you moron. They pay US taxes and have presidential voting power if they claim mainland residency. Please go back to 4th grade when this was taught. 65.215.94.13 (talk) 19:42, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, and no. What date was your father born? From what you say, I assume he is not aged over 56. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, to quote the article, persons "born in these territories on or after December 24, 1952 acquire U.S. citizenship at birth on the same terms as persons born in other parts of the United States". Hence, even if Sonia Sotomayor had been born in Puerto Rico (on the date of her birth, 1954-06-25) she would have had citizenship of the USA. Yet, as she was born on soil of the USA (in the Bronx) there is no doubt of her being truly "American" and it is incorrect to call her "Puerto Rican". It is, however, correct to say she "has Puerto Rican ancestry" or, equally correcty as her article says, "is of Puerto Rican descent". As are you, who ever you are.- Peter Ellis - Talk 11:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

IF they claim mainland residency... IF! is the key word! They don't vote for president for a reason. PR is a commonwealth not a state. Native American's such as Iroquois are American citizens as well, but have a psudeo status different from Puerto Rican's, but a psudeo status as well. CashRules (talk) 05:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

And could you further help us by telling us which grade you learned civility in?  Frank  |  talk  19:47, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Whoops, sorry, just flaunting the doctorate in Latin American politics again...65.215.94.13 (talk) 19:53, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

According to the Library of Congress, Puerto Rican's are immigrants. Please look up Unincorporated organized territories. Flaunting your doctorate? i.e. Essjay [4] CashRules (talk) 06:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Massachusetts is a commonwealth, too - what is your point? ErikHaugen (talk) 21:07, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

different type of commonwealth. Look up Puerto Rico. Massachusetts is a state and a commonwealth. PR is simply a commonwealth.

Wrong (again). Enough, just give it up. PR's are not immigrants, period, explanation point. And yes, MA, KY, VA, and PA are ALL commonwealths; HOWEVER, since they signed the constitution as a states in the 'United States' they are treated as states, but legally commonwealths. PR, Guam, Mariana Islands, etc., have never signed as a state. Just give it up...65.215.94.13 (talk) 16:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Puerto Ricans are born American citizens, and have the same right of free travel among the states, commonwealths, and territories of the U.S. as any other American citizen. So, they are not immigrants. End of argument. In any event, Ms. Sotomayor herself was born in the Bronx in New York City.Alinnyc (talk) 20:34, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Technically, immigration need to be accross national borders, or even any borders at all... Puerto Ricans are not aliens in the United States, but they are immigrants in the same way that if an Oregonian goes to live to New York, he is an immigrant.

People who move within a single country are migrants not immigrants. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:19, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Enough with the immigrant issue. Neither she, nor any other Puerto Rican, are immigrants in any sense, no matter which definition you unilaterally apply. And she was born in the US anyway! The constitution only bars non-US born people from attaining the presidency or vice presidency. It's totally moot from even discussin it.65.215.94.13 (talk) 16:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of her cases

Unlike some of the other people mentioned as Supreme Court candidates, there is minimal discussion of her cases and opinions that she's written. Looking around the net, I did see one at SCOTUSBlog: http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/judge-sotomayors-appellate-opinions-in-civil-cases/ Anyone have any thoughts on whether it would be appropriate to add a link in the article? An alternative source for the same information? This is the kind of information that I came here trying to find. Mdfst13 (talk) 05:30, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I think a link to the article sounds good. It looks like a pretty thorough and detailed article. What I think we should generally avoid is plucking out like one or two cases and saying these are the "major" "notable" cases for judging her appellate jurisprudence - that's highly, highly subjective and very prone to political manipulation by those who like or don't like the judge. (I think it's fine to link to a specific case that is notable because it was NEWSWORTHY, like the baseball and vince foster cases already in the article that she decided as a district judge. But it's hard to say what were the big cases for understanding her jurisprudence.) So a link to this (and any other articles like this) would be good.128.36.122.110 (talk) 18:53, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree - Scotusblog is no ordinary blog. It's cited by law professors and courts. I think they have a whole series on this judge's jurisprudence, and it would be worth linking to each of the posts. Will Beback, who just deleted Mdfst13's link, is an admin, so if he has views on this perhaps he'll post them here? - 96.233.30.146 (talk) 06:58, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Sloan v. Truong & Polgar?

On 5/18/09, "Kayokimura" added this: "Sam Sloan vs. Paul Truong and Susan Polgar, 08-5813-cv, decided May 8, 2009" and called it a "notable case." I was curious, so I looked it up. I could not find any such decision by Judge Sotomayor in Lexis or Westlaw (the two main legal databases). The case has something to do with an election inside a chess federation. The trial court dismissed the complaint and it does not look to me like a particularly interesting or notable case anyway. If Judge Sotomayor has actually decided this case, then maybe "Kayokimura" can provide a link to her decision or a correct citation and also some reason why this is "notable." 128.36.122.110 (talk) 18:18, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Catholic?

Is she Catholic? That would give the SCOTUS a Catholic majority for the first time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.66.236.56 (talk) 12:59, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, SCOTUS already has a Catholic majority: Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Alito, and Thomas.The Original Historygeek (talk) 07:24, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

...

TIME.com has said that it is not clear whether she is a practicing Catholic. The sidebar on this main page should not note that she is a "Roman Catholic" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.242.84.152 (talk) 20:23, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

This Boston Globe story is currently being used as a source for being raised Catholic. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:35, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

She's a 1972 graduate of Cardinal Spellman, a large Catholic high school in the Bronx. Does not prove one way or the other that she's a practicing Roman Catholic, of course, but she did have a Catholic education.74.72.224.4 (talk) 17:54, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

...

I've removed from the article that statement that she would be the 12th Catholic justice on the Supreme Court. Per the Demographics_of_the_Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States#Roman_Catholic_Justices article and section, it's too difficult to get a precise count, as there were justices who converted to or from the religion before, during (Clarence Thomas), or after their time on the court. And the exact count isn't that important, as clearly she's not a pioneer in this area. I did leave it that she would be six on the current court, as this is well-sourced enough. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:51, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. We get to a point of diminishing returns. She would, of course, be the first Catholic woman (and the first divorced woman, and will extend New York's record number of appointees to 14 Justices, and be the 9th Yale Law alum). bd2412 T 01:14, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Hot button political issues

Considering the large amount of views this page is going to get in the following days/weeks (like it or not, when news breaks people come to wikipedia first) does anyone think it appropriate to tastefully add Sotomayor's opinions on hot button political issues. It seems to me that most people really only care about where a prospective judge stands on abortion, gun control, and gay marriage; and generally dont care about the other 'boring stuff.' I think someone who knows where this judge stands (I sure dont) should add it in as this is what people will come here to read. Thanks guys. Peace and Love from Dayton, Ohio --75.187.83.247 (talk) 13:02, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The wonder of Wiki is mentioned on Huffpost

here. Darrenhusted (talk) 14:38, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I added it above in a template. thanks. Calendar (talk) 15:38, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

youtube is not a reliable source

Removed: In reality, she is a far-left judicial activist, as proven by own statements that courts make policy. [5] This maybe the case, but youtube is not a good source. Consider for example: CNN: Who is Sonia Sotomayor? She is a judge on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The liberal-leaning justice was named a district judge by President George H.W. Bush in 1992 and was elevated to her current seat by President Clinton. Supporters say that appointment history, along with what they describe as her moderate-liberal views, will give her some bipartisan backing in the Senate. Conservatives argue Sotomayor has a "hard-left record" and believes that judges should consider experiences of women and minorities in their decision-making. They also described her as a "bully" who "abuses lawyers." Calendar (talk) 15:27, 26 May 2009 (UTC) Her own words are the most reliable source! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.127.106.165 (talk) 15:29, 26 May 2009 (UTC) the judgement on whether she is liberal or not is your own, so it is original research. Find a source to back up your POV, I gave you one just now. Calendar (talk) 15:34, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Stop lying and calling her a "centrist". She said it. You can't deny it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfC99LrrM2Q — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.127.106.165 (talk • contribs)

Please don't say other editors are "lying". you tube is not a reliable source. I am not arguing whether or not she is left, right, up, or down, I am simply stating that your views need to be backed up with reliable sources. Do the homework, your views are in the article, don't they will be removed, that is how wikipedia works. I already provided you with the CNN site. I had no part in framing her as a centralist, or adding those cites. She maybe a hardcore liberal, but you need reliable sources to show this. Calendar (talk) 15:37, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Fine, fine, I accept this is wikipedia policy, but does it not strike you as ABSURD the idea that a third party describing the views of somebody, as in CNN is more "reliable" source of that person's views than a TAPE RECORDING of that person saying her opinions. Don't you think, then, that--again, I'm not arguing this is not wikipedia policy--that such a policy is STUPID ON ITS FACE? Youtube is merely a suppository of videotapes. The tapes could be from any source, and can generally be viewed by anybody to verify them. By wikipedia's logic, a recording of the 2000 Olympic 100 meter dash is "unreliable" because it was uploaded to youtube, but a DISCUSSION of that race is "reliable" because it was uploaded to the CNN site. Does such a policy make sense? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.56.136.141 (talk) 21:40, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The fact that she said those words is obviously not under dispute. However, the judgement that those words constitute proof that she is a "far-left judicial activist" is POV. 66.31.20.168 (talk) 10:25, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Amazing how a Republican president nominated, and a Republican-controlled Senate confirmed someone that people here consider to be so extremely liberal. Maybe folks around here should reconsider their definitions. (Hint: George 'Dubious' Bush was not even right-of-center) DOR (HK) (talk) 01:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

New Haven decision

It should be pointed out that she voted for throwing out the promotion test which showed "disparate impact" against blacks (only whites and one Hispanic passed the test), It is hard to imagine her voting to throw out the promotion test if no whites passed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.28.121.99 (talk) 16:04, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

She voted, as part of a unanimous three judge panel, to uphold a lower court ruling that allowed the City of New Haven to rescind the test. Several white firefighters who had taken the test had sued to stop the city from rescinding the test and its results. However, the City's legal counsel believed that accepting the test and the test results may have violated the "disparate impact" clause of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and have caused them to be sued successfully by non-white firefighters.Alinnyc (talk) 20:30, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

POV in Federal Judicial Service section

This is obviously POV and needs a re-write: "Falsely labelled byt left-wing groups a political centrist[5][6][10][11][12][13][14][15] by the American Bar Association Journal[10][11] and others,[5][6][12][13][14][15] Sotomayor was nominated on November 27, 1991, by President George H. W. Bush to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York vacated by John M. Walker, Jr. " GBrady (talk) 16:25, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Identity politics trumps juris prudence.

Why are you afraid of the truth? (This is what is known as a rhetorical question.)

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” — Judge Sonia Sotomayor, in her Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.127.106.165 (talk) 16:35, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The New York Times cited that quote. Grundle2600 (talk) 17:11, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree this should be added to the article! John Asfukzenski (talk) 02:04, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

That's a case of quote mining. If one look at the full text of the speech (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/politics/15judge.text.html), one sees that she's discussing the understanding of discrimination cases that other people who haven't experienced discrimination might not. I don't see the justification of mining one quote out-of-context to try to change its meaning as opposed to taking any other quote. --JamesAM (talk) 03:26, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The quote is NOT out of context, although as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't matter. [... Forumizing removed ...] Bill the Cat 7 (talk) 00:23, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Almas Mater

Will someone PLEASE PAY MORE ATTENTION when adding/updating information? For instance idiots who do not read carefully enough into the article or proper sources where it clearly says her undergrad was at Princton; yet the fact box states Cornell. Fact: Princeton. And do not change it again. Thanks.65.215.94.13 (talk) 17:14, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Several vandals are inserting the incorrect claim that her undergrad degree was from someplace other than Princeton. Perhaps a bulletin board somewhere suggested that as an activity for those with too much time on their hands. We can warn, then block, but these reversions have to be done carefully to avoid removing good-faith edits with which they will be interspersed. Edison (talk) 17:51, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Probably not vandals, just someone who's confused. Kathleen Sullivan who was widely expected to be named went to Cornell. That's probably why someone prepping that box in haste might have messed up. 130.111.163.179 (talk) 19:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

How about some protection

Just saw a load of vandalism on this page and seeing as her prominence is sure to grow maybe this page should be guarded a bit closer —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.219.155.200 (talk) 17:37, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

For now, we should be able to keep reverting the vandalism and warning, then blocking the vandals for repeat offenses. I expect that several admins are watching the article. Edison (talk) 17:52, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The article has been semi-protected for a week by User:Sephiroth BCR . [6]. Edison (talk) 17:58, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Article semi-protection will most likely be needed until after the nomination process.   Redthoreau (talk)RT 07:10, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Judge Sonia Sotomayor

As the foot notes indicate, her AB is from Princeton, not Cornell. 76.230.234.164 (talk) 17:56, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Probably just someone who's confused. Kathleen Sullivan who was widely expected to be named went to Cornell. That's probably why someone prepping that box in haste might have messed up. 130.111.163.179 (talk) 19:46, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Less, and more about prior cases

First, the Major League Baseball case is mentioned twice in the article. The second mention is enough. Also, several of the cases discussed later in the article have red links. These cases are sure to be discussed at length in the press and in the Senate hearings, so articles on them would be helpful. Of course, if confirmed, she must recuse herself from any cases that she handled before. --DThomsen8 (talk) 18:07, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

infobox photo

For me, at least, on a Mac running Safari, her infobox photo is distorted (squished so she looks like an El Greco figure). . The original photo, viewed on its photo page , looks fine. [1] what causes this; [2] Is this a problem for others, and [3] can it be fixed? - Nunh-huh 18:15, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Update: this seems to have been fixed when "imagesize = 200px" was added to the infobox. So, nevermind, I guess, unless someone can explain why thumbnailing looks so bad when this parameter is missing. - Nunh-huh 18:22, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, we need a MUCH more becoming photo of her. Those photos make her look hideous. I'm sure she is indeed a beautiful woman and a potential supreme court justice should have a better picture on wikipedia. Erich Mendacio (talk) 16:34, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Then tell the White House to take new photos, because that's what WP is relying upon. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:24, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

The first photograph that appears should be cropped so as not to reveal Judge Sotomayor's legs.---- [22:41, May 28, 2009 71.202.181.219]

The way the photo is composed, cropping as you suggest would throw off its visual balance. And the photo was released by the White House, so it's definitely intended to be at least semi-"official", which is what we want for the infobox. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I think the photo looks quite odd. It's a chest and head portrait in a formal setting, with a knee thrust into the frame. Just because it was released by the WH does not mean we must use it in the infobox unchanged. I think a visually balanced crop can be made by cutting from the top and sides of the frame as well as the bottom. I will give it a try. Jonathunder (talk) 13:39, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Bronx Geography

Wiki bio states that her Bronx home, which are the Bronxdale Houses projects, is walking distance from Yankee Stadium. This is not true. Bronxdale Houses are on the Southeast section of the Bronx and Yankee Stadium is closer to its Southwest section. Lostinka (talk) 21:30, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

How far is that, like how many blocks. I walked 20 blocks drunk in DC before. At 2am no less--in january. 75.187.83.247 (talk) 21:55, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The Bronxdale Houses are nowhere near Yankee Stadium-- about 4 miles. Not "a short walk," and not really "the South Bronx" either.

Rather than doing our own research on how far "walking distance" extends (it's a relative term in any case, let alone while drunk), let's stick to the sources. Jonathunder (talk) 16:22, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I've now phrased it as "relative proximity" to the Yankees, which should be vague enough to keep everyone satisfied. The Bronxdale Houses question is dealt with by another talk section below. Wasted Time R (talk) 19:58, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Considered by "several presidents, both Republican and Democratic"

"Prior to her selection as President Barack Obama's nominee, Sotomayor had been regarded as a potential Supreme Court nominee by several presidents, both Republican and Democratic."

JRtx: The articles cited in support of this do not talk about Sotomayor being considered for SC. They talk about Republican support, they talk about GHWB nominating her to a *different* court, but they do not strictly support the text I quote here. I realize Sotomayor was suggested to GWB by various democrats for consideration for SCOTUS, but I hadn't heard that Bush seriously entertained that suggestion. I would be surprised if he had. I would like to see evidence of this. I will revert back to my wording shortly, if you care to revert again or stop me please point me to the text from the sources you referred to that support this claim. thanks. ErikHaugen (talk) 22:07, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Also, I edited the text at Sonia_Sotomayor_Supreme_Court_nomination, so let's figure this out and get it right in both places - thanks. ErikHaugen (talk) 22:11, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi ErikHaugen. This isn't worth getting into a big argument about, but the cited source (ABA Journal) reads as follows: "A political centrist, the Bronx-born Sotomayor has been re­garded as a potential high court nominee by several presidents, both Republican and Democrat." The "high court" is the Supreme Court. I don't know if the source is referring to GWB or not - could be that GHWB regarded her as a potential future SCt nominee - but the source certainly supports the proposition, "Sotomayor had been regarded as a potential Supreme Court nominee by several presidents, both Republican and Democratic," which is almost an exact quote. If another source says this is false then the statement should obviously be qualified.JRtx (talk) 22:24, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

JRtx - I certainly don't want to get into an argument, I just want this article to be factual. When I read that article, I had assumed that it was talking about other "high" courts, like the one she is currently on, and not the SC, but perhaps you are right. If so, I am dying to know which rep. president considered her! GHWB presumably only nominated her to the district court because of Moynihan, not because Bush had high hopes for her career. I know of no evidence that GWB gave her a moment's notice after her referral by democrats, and to think that he did kind of defies imagination. No, I'm giving the ABA Journal article the benefit of the doubt - "high court" must include other courts, such as the one she is on now. Further evidence is to consider which *democrat* president the article could be talking about - it isn't Obama because he wasn't pres yet when the article was written. Clinton considered her for the 2nd. circuit court of appeals - a very high court indeed. ErikHaugen (talk) 23:13, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't have any inside info about whether this article is correct about what it says. But I am 100% certain that the phrase "high court," in the U.S. context, only ever refers to the U.S. Supreme Court, not to other important courts. See Supreme court. What "high court" means is the supreme court of a jurisdiction. Anyway, if some other sources say this is false, then probably the statement should get a qualification or whatever. JRtx (talk) 23:30, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

JRtx - ok, let's try to make sense of this. Clearly it was not GHWB: <http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/Why-did-George-HW-Bush-pick-Sotomayor-for-the-courts-46094732.html> - '"She was not our first choice," recalls a third Bush I official, "but she was someone who was, if we were going to get a nominee confirmed to that position -- essentially someone we had to go with."' And for O'Connor's replacement, I don't think anyone seriously thinks Bush considered Sotomayor or the other recommendations for a minute. She was never on any list published by GWB or leaked by anyone, was she? Hopefully we can agree that it wasn't Reagan. I have a problem with this seemingly obviously false claim standing on Wikipedia when it is only backed up by a sloppily worded article. Can we find any other evidence that *any* president, other than Obama, has ever indicated in the slightest that Sotomayor might be on the SC? ErikHaugen (talk) 00:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes - this is absurd. The fact that she may have been "considered" in some entirely formalistic and meaningless manner as a gesture to the Democrats that recomended her, and some article offhandily dropped a misleading comment about this, does not justify having such a deceptive line in the begining part of this article. Can we use a little common sense? Of course GWB didn't consider her in any meaningful manner, just look at the staunch conservatives he apointed to the court. And as far as any other Republican president considering her - no way. She would have been way too young and inexperienced for this to be a likely scenario, remember, her first appointment to a trial bench was in the early 90s. Perhaps she was considered by Clinton, but not a republican. I really wonder at the self-deception people are trying to engage in, portraying her as a moderate jurist that republicans should be happy about. OF COURSE she is a liberal - Obama is a liberal, he was elected on such a platform, and he is entitled in our democratic system to put forward a liberal SCOTUS nominee. Why admitting that should be regarded as a black mark, and poeple should seize on clumsily worded sources to make absurd claims to disguise the fact that Obama nominated a candidate who is politically in line with him, I have no idea. Does anyone here really expect her not to carry on Souter's role in the 4 member liberal justice camp? Does anyone think she would have survived Obama's vetting process if her views were not such? If she indeed would have been the kind of jurist GWB would have seriously considered? JaxElls (talk) 04:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC)]

We could say "According to XXX, she was considered..." - Peregrine Fisher (talk) contribs) 04:21, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what is best. On the one hand, this is a pretty reliable source. But on the other hand, you all make a very good case that the statement itself is just not that likely-sounding, and so we should not just state it as fact without more support. I agree. (I suspect that it was Bush 41 who the source is talking about, not Bush 43, but it's hard to tell.) Maybe it's best to do what talk said, and/or also restate it in more general terms: that as a judge, prior to being nominated by Obama, she had been considered for elevation to higher courts by several presidents, both Republican and Democratic. That way, if it was just sloppy wording on the ABA Journal's part, we are not taking that wording and making it more precise than it really is. JRtx (talk) 11:03, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

"Sotomayor had been regarded by the Journal of the American Bar Association as a potential Supreme Court nominee by several presidents" - now it just sounds silly. It kind of sounds like the ABA is involved in the nomination process or something. Well, I suppose it isn't completely inaccurate about anything important, so I will leave this alone. thanks. ErikHaugen (talk) 18:06, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree that now it is totally incoherent. Maybe better to just get rid of it after all. Could say instead "Sotomayor was appointed by presidents of both parties, and some news sources said she could have bipartisan support," and leave it at that. I think that was the change one of you made a couple of days ago. Or if we wanted to preserve the existing reference and render it coherent, we could say "Sotomayor was appointed by presidents of both parties, and it was reported by the Journal of the ABA that presidents of both parties considered her for higher judicial office." But honestly, you all have convinced me that this one source is not worth giving undue weight to, even though it is the American Bar Association. Lots of journalists have written about this story in the past couple of days and they haven't discussed this.JRtx (talk) 17:45, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Lead

See WP:Lead, it should summarize the whole article. It wasn't even as big as it should have been. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 22:34, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Old cites

I made this point earlier, but noone seems to be discussing it. I believe the cites for the judgment that she is a "centrist" that are from the 90s should be deleted. These judgments were made without the benefit of the past over 10 years of her judicial record, and so aren't judgments about her current judicial record at all - rather they are outdated. This is especially true in that they were formed exclusivly based on her record as a trial judge - where cases are more fact-based and give comparitivly less insight into jurisprudential views. There are plenty of more recent ones already cited, from the past couple of years - the plethora of ancient obsolete judgments seems only to be included to create a giant string of cites after the proposition that she is a centrist, so as to give the appearance of it being unassailable. We are dealing with a Jurist with nearly 20 years experience. Judgments based only on her first few years are simply not any support at all for descriptions of her judicial record. But I didn't want to remove them myself, so I turn the issue over to discussion. JaxElls (talk) 04:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

It's controversial, so we should use the newest and highest quality sources that we can get our hands on. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 23:33, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

Looks to me like three of the citations currently shown are from 2009, and one is from 2008. Some others are older, but is anybody suggesting that she has shifted dramatically to the left in that time? Unless some sources are saying that, I'm not sure I see a big problem with some of the sources -- if high quality -- being older. 130.132.120.30 (talk) 23:47, 26 May 2009 (UTC)

The very fact that we have some recent judgments to that effect weighs against including the older ones. Besides, its not that "she has shifted to the left" - its that at the time of those older judgments, she really had no record at all to shift one way or the other. Those earlier judgments were made on almost no basis at all, compared to the judicial record available now. She wasn't even a trial judge until 1992 - and we've got sources from '92 and '95 up there? Not to menotion she didn't really start accumulating a record to make these kinds of judgments about until she became an appeals court judge in '98. As I said, trial courts deal with many fact intensive decisions, rather than the many arguments of legal jurisprudence that an appelate judge deals with. The simple truth is, the cited sourced do not support the statement they are cited for at all. The statement is a judgment synthenizing her entire judicial record and assigning a desriptive term. Judgments that were made about the first couple of years of her record, are nothing more than judgments about her early career, not about her current record as a judge. JaxElls (talk) 04:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Ok, how about someone who can edit semi-protected pages (I can't, never edited before) go ahead and remove any of the cites for her being a "centrist" (or any other sweeping judgment for that matter) that are from before she was made an appeals court judge in '98. I'd really prefer removing all but the last few years, but to avoid getting too aggressive, lets just remove all those 92, 95, etc statements, as they really have no purpose. Can someone take care of this?

JaxElls (talk) 21:11, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Baseball ruling

Currently it's mentioned in 3 or 4 separate places in the article; these should be consolidated... AnonMoos (talk) 00:15, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Nominee

I removed the 'nominee' listing for her in the infobox. This seems WAY TOO PRESUMPTUOUS and HIGHLY INAPPROPRIATE. She hasn't been confirmed yet, and we should NOT list "nominees" for something in the infobox. We should only list official titles for actual positions that these people hold. Yes, the article should certainly say something about her being the nominee to fill Justice Souter's position, but putting that in the infobox is taking a gigantic leap way too far. Dr. Cash (talk) 03:24, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

She IS a nominee. The President nominates, and the Senate confirms, which completes the appointment process. Nyq0227 (talk) 03:57, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I think the issue was whether there's a separate "Supreme Court nominee" section within the infobox. I agree with the OP that it isn't appropriate. Rest assured, about two seconds after her confirmation vote is finished, it'll be there. Wasted Time R (talk) 04:15, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Photo? File:Sonia Sotomayor.jpg

The current photo in the infobox is absolutely horrible! I know we preferably want to use free images on here, but I am sure that we can find a photo of her, I dunno, ACTUALLY LOOKING INTO THE CAMERA, possibly?!?! Good grief! This image of her does her no justice whatsoever! Dr. Cash (talk) 03:32, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

WP is justly famous for its awful photos of BLPs, because the rules for use are so restrictive. I've found a 2004 group photo that I've added to the article, but it won't do for the top photo. But if she gets confirmed there will be a formal Supreme Court portrait done of her, and the problem will solve itself. Wasted Time R (talk) 10:28, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Article mistakes in caselaw summaries

We should start discussing how to improve the case summaries - Here's a mistake - the article's discussion of In Malesko v. Correctional Services Corp.[57], keeps referring to Bivens as a law. "A law" implies something like a statute. Bivens is case law, not a statute. Its is a case that found an implied right of action within the constitution against agents of the federal government for violation of constitutional rights. It should thus be reffered to as "case law", and to be clear, it should not be called Bivens, but rather should be called "a Bivens action" or something like that. Bivens in just an abbrevated case name, and so the word "action" or "cause of action" should follow it. Also, the whole description is filed under Antitrust (???) and reads very oddly - I'm a law school grad and I'm really not sure what its trying to say. Should be cleaned up by someone familar with that case. JaxElls (talk) 04:16, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Take a stab at it. Most of us here don't have any legal training. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:42, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I'd like to, but unfrotunetly my lack of previous edits keeps me from editing semi-protected pages like this one. Looks like someone did a pretty good job cleaning it up in the meantime - the only further change I'd suggest, is referring to it as an "established Supreme Court Doctrine" makes it sound a bit odd, like its some kind of power-grab the court did. I'd just refer to it as "the implied right to bring a cause of action for violations of constitutional rights by agents of the Federal Government." Also, from what I can tell it sounds like her ruling was analagous to prior supreme court precedent under the statutory state version of Bivens - Section 1983. Someone who has access to her opinion might want to check if this was part of her reasoning, and include a quick statement to that effect if it was. As it currently stands, it might read like she was being more of a "judicial activist" than she really was - as my guess is she was just mirroring the analogous supreme court caselaw dealing with private entities intertwined with state actors. But again, without access to the case, I can't tell one way or another. JaxElls (talk) 21:11, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Sotomayor quotes published in The New York Times

I created a new section called "Sotomayor's statements on her judicial philosophy," with this text:

"In 2001 at the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, Sotomayor stated, "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." At the same event, she also stated, "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging." In 2005, she said that "...Court of Appeals is where policy is made. And I know, and I know, I know that this is on tape, and I should never say that. Because we don’t make law. I know. Okay, I know. I know. I'm not promoting it, and I'm not advocating it. I'm, you know."

However, someone erased the section. In the comment section, they claimed that the quotes were "right wing anti-sotomayor talking points." Even if that claim is true, that does not take away their relevancy. The fact that The New York Times chose to publish these quotes is very relevant. Grundle2600 (talk) 05:18, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

They would be relevant under a larger and more holistic "judicial philosophy" section, but a whole section for a single quote isn't appropriate and constitutes an extremely narrow representation of her judicial philosophy. NPOV cuts both ways: adequate representation is necessary from all sides to give a clearer picture of her judicial philosophy; hell, we're not even at the confirmation hearings yet. Setting the section by itself in such a manner is a WP:UNDUE problem. — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 07:53, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

First of all, the section had three quotes, not one. Secondly, those were the quotes that have been published in the mainstream media during the time when she was first cited as a possible nominee. Third, the article should reflect the sources, which is exactly what I did. Grundle2600 (talk) 08:30, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I added the expand tag to the section. If anyone finds any relevant quotes published by a reliable source, especially if the source is recent enough to encompass when she was first cited as a possible nominee, please add it to the section. Grundle2600 (talk) 08:35, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

These quotes, along with some that have been added since, are more than a bit problematic on BLP grounds, since they're entirely missing context. The media doesn't have a neutrality policy - but we do. If we're going to mention these soundbites, we need to put them in the context she actually said them in at the time. Rebecca (talk) 09:18, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

This new section by Grundle2600 is a major WP:BLP violation, as well as violating WP:UNDUE. If you listen to the Republican talking points about Sotomayor over the past 24 hours, as I have been doing, from organizations who openly say they oppose her nomination/confirmation, these are precisely the same out-of-context quotes that you hear over and over from those sources. Just because a mainstream media source ran the same quotes (probably in the context of talking about her "controversial statements" and certainly not in the context of exploring her "jurisprudence"/"judicial philosophy") does not mean that it is even remotely accurate for us to run those same quotes and title the section "judicial philosophy"! That is way beyond the pale. For starters, Sotomayor herself did not say that any of these quotes were descriptions of anything to do with her "judicial philosophy." They are just things she said, in different contexts, that her opponents have tried to spin as "judicial philosophy." So my conclusion is that Rebecca is right and the only legitimate way to use these quotes would be to give them way more context and show what she was talking about. The section as it stands should be cut immediately in my view. A lot of people are viewing this page and it is supposed to be an encyclopedia, not a bunch of partisan talking points. - 130.132.117.20 (talk) 10:02, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I cited The New York Times and The Washington Post for those quotes, and that meets the test of verifiability. It's a fact, not an opinion, that she said those quotes, so that meets the test of NPOV. The quotes are being cited in many other sources, so that makes them notable. Both of the newspapers that I cited endorsed Obama for President, so they are not right-wing propaganda. If you think the section should be expanded with more context, then please do so. But you can't make the section better by erasing it. Grundle2600 (talk) 10:24, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Even if you are right that these quotes are notable, they are notable for being controversial statements. To say these particular quotes constitute her 'judicial philosophy' is simply to adopt a highly contentions, political viewpoint and make it the center of the article. JRtx (talk) 10:49, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Based on my reading of WP:BLP, these quotes should not be included in a way that makes it seem like they are representative of her judicial philosophy. They could be included as part of a more comprehensive discussion of her views, but the quotes in isolation are not good enough for the very high standard set out by WP:BLP.66.31.20.168 (talk) 13:09, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Then I will change the section title to "controversial quotes." Grundle2600 (talk) 16:56, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

"Controversial quotes" isn't really good enough either. An "opposition to the nomination" section might be more appropriate, and with it, we can quote Sotomayor in context - so we can source them as talking points for her critics, and at the same time, ensure that we're quoting what she actually said. Rebecca (talk) 18:24, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't care what the section is called. And you can feel free to add any information about context that you want. I just want the quotes to be included. If a section of an article isn't so good, then it should be fixed, not erased. If lots of people add to the section, all the better! Grundle2600 (talk) 19:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Move to the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination article

It's clear that these quotes are relevant as a part of the arguments against confirming Sotomayor, but I don't think these quotes merit a full section in her main biography, except maybe in the future as part of a well-developed "judicial philosophy" section. I think this material should be moved to the nomination article.--ragesoss (talk) 18:28, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. They are only controversial in the context of the nomination fight. Gamaliel (talk) 18:31, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The quotes are no more or less controversial than the section on her past rulings. (In the name of full disclosure, I created both sections.) I actually think the two articles should be merged. Grundle2600 (talk) 19:55, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if the rulings are controversial or not. But after she's confirmed or rejected by the Senate, no one will care about the quotes. But the rulings in this article will continue to be the law of the land. 66.31.20.168 (talk) 02:44, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, it would be better to have them worked somehow into the linked article on her nomination. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 21:03, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The Berkley Law "A Latina Judge's Voice" lecture is now described in general terms in the "Judgeship" subsection for her Appeals Court Judge material. It was a major public lecture that was later reprinted in a law journal, and deals with biographically significant themes for her. The "wise Latina" quote is now given in the Supreme Court nomination section, since it has become the primary subject of discussion about her nomination and thus belongs in even this summary section. Wasted Time R (talk) 03:32, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

"Centrist" vs. "Liberal"

I have added a new sentence in the Federal Judicial Service section about how some reputable sources consider her to have liberal inclinations. I'm not trying to pick an ideological fight here. I just thought it would be wise to include the fact that many news organizations and legal scholars do actually identify her as a liberal, even if a moderate one. The cited sources are this article from the Associated Press, this article from the Wall Street Journal, and this article from Time. All explicitly identify her as a liberal. Jeffrey Toobin on CNN also described her as a moderate liberal.UberCryxic (talk) 06:23, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with you that all points of view should be included. Grundle2600 (talk) 07:44, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Environment

Should there be a mention about her ruling against power plants and favoring the Clean Water Act, which was overturned by the US Supreme Court.[7] Showtime2009 (talk) 15:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The Bronxdale Project, where Sonia Sotomayor grew up in NOT in the South Bronx nor is it walking distance from Yankee Staduim.

I'm tired of the media and other information websites listing the Bronxdale Projects, where Sonia Sotomayor grew up, as being located in the South Bronx. That is factually NOT TRUE. Check any NYC Map/Bronx and you'll see. The Bronxdale Projects are in the East section of the Bronx. Furthermore, Yankee Staduim is located in the West side of the Bronx, a lenghty car drive away from the East section of the Bronx. Yankee Stadium is NOT a short walk from the Bronxdale Projects. Wikipedia, please correct your article page on Sonia Sotomayor to reflect the above statements. Thank you Jomacue (talk) 17:58, 27 May 2009 (UTC)Joanne Cuevas

I don't know anything about this, except that "walking distance" is a very subjective term. I often enjoy five mile walks when the weather is nice, but some able bodied people think they need to drive to get somewhere that's just a few blocks away. Grundle2600 (talk) 18:13, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

There were two refs for that statement; I checked them both and removed one that didn't actually state that (didn't contradict it either). The remaining one does, indeed say that. However, it also calls her parents "immigrants" so I find it less than totally convincing. Let's work on finding cites in reliable sources that address it.  Frank  |  talk  19:43, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I was struggling with this this morning. This 1995 NYT story has her saying, "You can't grow up in the South Bronx without knowing about baseball." This long NYT profile from today's paper doesn't say where she lived at first, although her mother worked in the South Bronx. But its "Childhood in the East Bronx" section sort of suggests they were first living with other Puerto Ricans in the East Bronx. Then in the 1960s, exact year unspecified, they move into the Bronxdale Houses, which is in Soundview, Bronx, which is in ... either East or South Bronx, depending upon the use of the term at various times. See this New Yorker bit (which alas references WP in part). Then by the late 1960s, when she was in high school, they move to Co-op City, which is Northeast Bronx. So I'm still looking for something definitive on where they lived first. But although she's more East than South, she seems to at least partly self-identify as South. I'll try to work all this in. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:51, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, speaking as a Bronx native, it's not that clear that Bronxdale houses are East Bronx. Bronxdale Houses are in Soundview, and Soundview is south central - really not East Bronx. Colloquially, anything south of Tremont is considered South Bronx - some even would say south of Fordham Rd. As for Co-Op City, it is Northeast Bronx, not East Bronx. And our article says she was born in the SOuth Bronx and moved to Bronxdale houses, and she describes herself as having grown up in the South Bronx, so what's the point of this disagreement? It's not like the East Bronx is Riverdale and somehow takes away from her bona fides. Signed, Born and bred Tvoz/talk 01:20, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll happily defer to the born & breds for any further editing on this one ... this LAT story has some Bronx prideful reaction, but isn't specific about areas within ... Wasted Time R (talk) 01:28, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh no - don't give up! I haven't found anything definitive either about where they lived before Bronxdale - my only point is that the lines between south and east Bronx are kind of blurry, and I would go with the south self-identification if we can't find anything more, with links to Soundview and Co-Cop City as we have. Tvoz/talk 01:50, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, there are now two sources (Time cover story and a more recent NYT story) that say she moved into the Bronxdale Houses in 1957, when she was 3 years old. I've changed the article accordingly. This makes it less important where in the Bronx she lived before that, since it wouldn't have made any lasting impression on her. Wasted Time R (talk) 20:00, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Merge?

Merge tags have been added to this and Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination. I don't think this is appropriate; there is way too much information that would have to be cut from the nomination article, especially as it develops over the next few months. The nomination is notable, and distinct enough from her biography, to merit its own article (and we have similar articles on other nominations), and putting all the nomination information here would be undue weight on the recent news.--ragesoss (talk) 21:17, 27 May 2009 (UTC) Nevermind, it looks like the tags were added specifically for the quotes section.--ragesoss (talk) 21:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I added it to merge both entire articles. But I would never do the merge without a thorough discussion and a consensus. Someone else must have changed the merge tag to just the one section. Grundle2600 (talk) 22:44, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any reason for a merge. As Category:Nominations to the United States Supreme Court shows, there are a number of "XXX Supreme Court nomination" articles, some of them quite lengthy. (And if the Bork and Thomas nominations had taken place during the WP era, you can bet they would be really long.) It would throw the weighting off completely to include all this material in the main BLP articles. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:47, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

• Absolutely disagree with the idea of merging the two articles - this is her biography, that is specifically about the nomination and adding that here would throw this article off. WTR has it right. Tvoz/talk 00:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Sectioning changes

I regrouped the sectioning a bit for better chrono flow, combining Early life and education together (typical for our BLPs), which also solved an image problem, and moving her 1980s-era pro bono etc activity from Other activities into Early legal career, which is where it belongs since it helped contribute to her being named a judge. I also reloc'd her marriage to fit the chrono better. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:54, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I've subsequently further split the Early life and education section into two. Wasted Time R (talk) 20:16, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

A different sectioning question. Does the current "Previous rulings" section make sense as it is? It jumbles together her district court original rulings with her circuit court appellate rulings, and places them all of out chrono with respect to the SCOTUS nomination. I think it may be preferable to move the district ones into the "Federal district judge" section, and to create a "Federal circuit appellate judge" section to contain the other ones (with the current confirmation section also being moved into there). This proposed approach seems even better if you consider what the article will look like if she gets confirmed to SCOTUS. Wasted Time R (talk) 04:15, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree, it makes sense to sort the rulings, especially since as a district judge she authored opinions on her own and as an appellate judge her rulings were as part of a panel of judges and so don't mean quite the same thing. I'd say the current nomination ought to be its own section rather than a subsection.--ragesoss (talk) 04:31, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

As a first step, I've done this for the district court rulings. Wasted Time R (talk) 15:27, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I've now done this for the circuit court rulings as well. An open question is whether there should still be subsections for each topic (First Amendment, Second Amendment, etc.) or whether all the rulings material should be combined into a "Notable rulings" header, as I did for the district judge period (where there was much less content). I'd tend to favor combining them, especially since the topic sections are short, stubby, and potentially misleading (e.g. the abortion ruling doesn't really tell us what she thinks about it at a constitutional level). What do people think? Also imagine what the section structure of this article will look like once she's in the Supreme Court, assuming she's confirmed. Wasted Time R (talk) 23:34, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I took a middle road, merging them under one "Notable rulings" header but using non-header bold separators to maintain the topic area descriptions. That solves my main goal of keeping the volume of the table of contents down. Wasted Time R (talk) 03:27, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Over reffing

We don't need to back up statements with so many refs. We should pick the best one for the less controversial statements, and use at most two or three of the better ones for the more controversial statements. Too many refs interrupt the reading experience. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:59, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a limitation of the MediaWiki technology. There should be a way for readers to suppress the footnotes if they don't want to see them. But the refs are necessary. News accounts conflict on some biographical aspects of her early years, and we have to establish which accounts we are using both for our readers and future editors on this article. Every time I've seen cite purges, a bad cycle develops: cites are reduced, sentences are moved or spliced and then lose cites, fact tags are added by new editors, inferior cites are brought in or material is deleted outright. Wasted Time R (talk) 04:09, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

abortion section has been slanted

someone has inserted the words pro-life and anti-life

this is the wrong terminology. it should be anti-abortion and supportive of abortion rights.

I am pro-choice b/c I am pro-life. I know that if we make abortion illegal or inaccessible, women women will take things into their own hands and then there will be 2 deaths. I respect each person's right to decide what happens to their body in conjunction with their religious leader, their family, their MD. Teenmd (talk) 06:19, 28 May 2009 (UTC)teenmd

am not able to edit the page b/c just registered today. and thought that my wikianswers registration was sufficient which has been open for years? but guess not.

Something very sneaky and subtle happened a little while ago in the paragraph about Sotomayor's abortion decision, Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush. First, in revision 292821567, a user named Hoopsworldscout changed the terms "anti-abortion" and "pro-choice" inside a quote from Sotomayor to "pro-life" and "anti-life." Then, in the next edit, 292822015, the same user, Hoopsworldscout, removed the quotation marks from the quote, with an edit summary "(removed improper quotation, statement was not a quote of Sotomayor, corrected phraseology to names of both sides of the abortion debate)." Well, actually, the statement WAS a direct quote from Sotomayor UNTIL Hoopsworldscout butchered some of the words in the quote to fit his/her own ideological leanings. The exact quote, from Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush, 304 F.3d 183, at page 198 (see here:[8]), is: "the government is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds." That's the exact quote, and we should put it back in the article. I can't quite believe the audacity of changing the words of a quote and then claiming it's not an exact quote because you changed the words! Somebody please undo the edits by Hoopworldscout, and also, I would watch any further edits by this user on this page. -130.132.117.25 (talk) 07:13, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

I've restored her original quote, and done some work on the rest of the section too. Part of the problem here was that pieces of the quote were wikilinked, which is almost always wrong per MOS:QUOTE. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:40, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

Missing citation: "she would be the court's first Latina Justice"

The last sentence of the intro is: "If confirmed, she would be the court's first Latina Justice."

Shouldn't this have a citation?

avi4now (talk) 14:04, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

There is some debate over this, see "SCOTUS Sephardic Jew Trivia Edition" from tpm. Josh reaches the conclusion that Benjamin Cardozo being of Portuguese origination is not actually hispanic. So yes there could easily be found a citation for this information, but it might miss the broader debate over justice Cardozo. TharsHammar ^Bits and^Pieces 14:30, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

The broader debate over Cardozo is at Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States. A few people consider Cardozo to have been Hispanic, but the majority view is that he was not. bd2412 T 16:47, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

The citations for the proposition that Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic justice are not missing. They are in the text of the article. The lede is not the place for citations. The lede is long enough as it is. As with most propositions in the lead, this is one where the citations are found lower down. Also, anyone joining the discussion at this point may want to look back up higher in this talk page, where there was an extremely long discussion of the topic of Sotomayor as the first Hispanic justice. I am deleting these footnotes and "arguably" etc under WP:UNDUE -- it is simply a widely-reported fact that she would be the first Hispanic, or Latina, justice. Half-baked speculation to the contrary about Justice Cardozo's allegedly Hispanic identity is a sufficiently marginal fringe theory that it should not be in this article, and certainly not in the lede. JRtx (talk) 02:33, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

This conversation is pointless as everyone knows that Benjamin Cardozo was the first Hispanic justice almost 100 years ago. I learned that in law school. Erich Mendacio (talk) 16:32, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I think some people above already discussed this. What you say "everyone knows" is actually a totally crackpot, fringe theory. There is just no way that Justice Cardozo can count as Hispanic. He had one distant ancestor who came from England who before that was from Portugal - that's the sole connection. In Justice Cardozo's lifetime, he was never considered "Hispanic," and by today's definitions, even his ancestor was not "Hispanic" because the word refers to Spanish colonies, not Portugal. Check the Census bureau. Portugal has nothing to do with "Hispanic" at all - and Justice Cardozo himself is not even from Portugal anyway. So please give it a rest! I think all this Cardozo discussion is being pushed by partisans who don't like Sonia Sotomayor and don't want to admit that her appointment would be historic. The only source I could find in a mainstream publication baldly asserting that Justice Cardozo was Hispanic was an unbiased source named Karl Rove, writing in the Wall St. Journal[9]. So please, could everybody give this tired, tired argument a rest? 96.233.30.146 (talk) 02:23, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Cardozo spoke Spanish fluently and could read and understand Portuguese. He was an erudite person who demonstrated an interest in his Sephardic lineage although he apparently could never identify exactly whether his ancestors originated in Portugal or Spain, in either case they would have been Iberian Jews, themselves the descendents of Latin speaking Jews present in Iberia since Roman times.

He attended the Spanish-Portuguese Synogogue in New York City, where services were held in Sephardic (i.e. Latin) accented Hebrew interspersed with Ladino words and phrases (i.e. words derived from Old Spanish and Old Portuguese, and that could have been derived from either of the two related languages). Both sides of his family took great pride in their Ibero-Jewish heritage. Sephardic Jews made little distinction between those who had originated in Portugal and those who had originated in Spain, in either case the traditional language spoken was Ladino, the culture an amalgamation of Hebrew, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Arab (they were in their own view the minority par excellence).

Sonia Sotomayor is a light-skinned Afro-Puerto Rican, which means many of her ancestors were forcibly removed from West Africa and transported as slaves to Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santo Domingo, she likely does not have the luxury of tracing her genealogy back through the centuries to Spain or any other part of Iberia, unless she were inclined to investigate the history of the slave-holders who owned her African ancestors and had sexual relations with them (a not very uplifting undertaking). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Marenach (talk • contribs) 14:09, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I have searched intensely, and in vain, for any source that supports the contention that Cardozo spoke Spanish. bd2412 T 15:30, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

National Council of La Raza

Judge Sonia Sotomayor is listed as a member of the National Council of La Raza, a group that's promoted driver's licenses for illegal aliens, amnesty programs, and no immigration law enforcement by local and state police.Jameszz12937 (talk) 18:07, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

We don't provide descriptions of organizations when an article can simply provide a wikilink to the article itself, in this case National Council of La Raza. If you feel the description of the organization, at that article, is incorrect, please feel free to get involved in discussions on that article's talk/discussion page about changing that article.

More importantly, the point you raise is something relevant to her nomination, which is an entirely separate article. [I'm not aware that anyone has pointed out something about her La Raza membership (sort of like being in the NRA or ACLU?) that was important to her life.] -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:18, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of this belongs on the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination page, not here. 96.233.30.146 (talk) 03:12, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I disagree. Her post-law school, pre-judge years ("Early legal career" in this article) are important not just because of the two paying jobs she held (ADA, private law firm) but also because of the organizations she joined at that time, which both pointed to her social/political beliefs and also gave her the visibility to be considered for a judgeship. So I've added a brief mention that she joined La Raza, and am looking for WP:RS that further describe her role there. Of course, debates over the nature of La Raza itself belong in the La Raza article and the effect it has on her nomination belongs in the nomination article. Wasted Time R (talk) 05:16, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree with John Broughton: the question about this kind of detail is whether this was an actual activity of hers -- i.e. she was on the board of directors of the organization, or an officer of it, or something like that, so that this was actually an activity she "did" in her life or something important in her life -- or whether this is just something she was a member of, the way somebody might be a member of the NRA, the ACLU, the American Bar Association, etc. The source says she joined the "National Council of La Raza" (NCLR) but that is just the name of the organization itself -- it's not that she was on some special "national council" within the group. "National Council" is in the group's name. Can anyone find a source that says whether she was actually an official or important person in this group, versus being just any old member? If she was just a member than I don't think it's important enough to be in the bio, any more than the American Bar Assocation and many other groups I would expect that she was a member of as an attorney. (Although if this is a subject of debate in her nomination process, then it could appear on the nomination page.) - JRtx (talk) 18:07, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I keep scanning Google News for some mainstream newspaper that reports on this in more depth, especially in light of Tancredo's idiotic remarks. Haven't seen anything yet. What I have in the article is a placeholder for now. Wasted Time R (talk) 18:12, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Here it is. A Washington Post article today states: "Between 1999 and 2003, she was a member of the National Council of La Raza, the large nationwide Hispanic advocacy group at the heart of the immigration debate. An organization spokeswoman said that Sotomayor limited her membership to paying the $35 annual dues and, records suggested, did not attend any conferences." So this was not an organization she helped run, organize, or advance. She did not even attend its meetings. This is certainly not something that "gave her visibility to be considered for judgeship." This is just a big national group, like the American Bar Association or the NAACP or the Anti-Defamation League or take your pick, which she was a member of for a few years in the sense of responding to their mailings and writing a $35 check. Although it is a right-wing talking point all over the web that Sotomayor was heavily involved in La Raza, actual reporting seems to show the opposite. In my view, unless some credible source comes along contradicting this Washington Post article on this point, we should take the La Raza reference out of this bio page. This is just not significant enough to be a part of a person's biography. Most people whose biographies appear on Wikipedia send in annual membership checks to a variety of organizations, I'm sure, but those facts are not important enough to be part of the biography pages. - JRtx (talk) 05:26, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, based on this, her membership in NCLR is not significant enough for the main BLP. This episode probably deserves a mention in the nomination subarticle, though, as an example of how the rhetoric and hyperbole got ramped up so fast, with this source being used to show the reality. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:47, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I think you're right about putting it in the nomination article. Given that the accusation is out there, it is probably worth mentioning the accusation and also the facts. It is an impressive example of "how the rhetoric and hyperbole got ramped up so fast"... - JRtx (talk) 20:19, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

More about previous cases

This article is having more and more descriptions of cases added. Having an inline citation which leads to the actual case ruling is very helpful, and even more helpful is having an article about the case. Please consider adding this information, or consider creating a new article about the case, when adding another case to this article. --DThomsen8 (talk) 12:43, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Allegations of racism

WPUndue clearly does not apply here, the news has 16,000 hits, appearing in many quality media. Perhaps we could create a paragraph of its own for the allegations below, but since these are intrincably linked with the nomination, it would be less than balanced to talk lengthily about the latter, about her origin and race and whatever and leave out the former. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 13:27, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Has this first been brought up in the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination talk page where it would be more appropriate as it is directly related to the supreme court nomination hoopla? Brothejr (talk) 14:01, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Per WP:lead, the "racist" comments doesn't belong in the introduction and are already covered at Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination‎. --J^mundo 14:06, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

It is not really notable, to quote Robert Gibbs its "just the blog of a former lawmaker", or to quote Wonkette "Fat Unemployed Adulterer Criticizes Sotomayor, On Twitter" [10] hardly seems noteworthy enough to mention in the article about Judge Sotomayor, let alone in the lede. TharsHammar ^Bits and^Pieces 14:14, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

This stuff does not belong in the bio article of a living person, and it's wildly inappropriate for the lead. Jonathunder (talk) 15:06, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The place to deal with all allegations of this kind is definitely the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination page, and I see they are already over there. 96.233.30.146 (talk) 02:28, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

A quote from the person is NOT an allegation, its a fact that the person said what they said. The question should only be "was this racist" - and by definition the quote was racist - was it malicious? Probably not, but it was racist. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.165.186.20 (talk) 03:13, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I agree this doesn't belong in the lead, but I think it does merit brief mention in the nomination section. So far, the "wise Latina" line from the 2001 speech has been the focal point of the debate about her nomination, and I've added that fact with several supporting references to it in that section. And as the article now illustrates, much of Sotomayor's life has been involved with issues of race and gender, and the charge of racism being hurled back at her (no matter if bogus) is a notable biographical event for her. Wasted Time R (talk) 14:53, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

proposed new section: Sotomayor's rude and abrasive demeanor on the bench?

I am new to wikipedia so i can't edit the page yet but i did read in the ny times and saw on the news as i'm sure you have too that there have been serious questions raised about Sotomayor's temperment and demeanor. Here is one source published today: [11]. (Ny Times). Erich Mendacio (talk) 16:31, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I was skeptical, but that is a very good article. I think it is worth noting in the part about her judicial approach, in as neutral and factual a way as possible, that she is known for being well prepared, aggressive in questioning lawyers, and "sharp tongued" (if there's a better way to paraphrase that). If it looks like this is becoming an issue in the nomination, or was part of Obama's selection / vetting process it may also be worth working into the article about the nomination. Having discussed that in those two places, it's probably not worth mentioning yet a third time in this article's brief nomination section, unless it becomes a defining or pivotal issue. Wikidemon (talk) 16:43, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

I think this might become an issue. Not only was this article published today, but questions about Sotomayor's rudeness on the bench have been increasingly a popular topic on cable news. I could find some links if you want. I know there is also a Federal Almanac published with disparaging reviews from laywers that practiced in front of her. Erich Mendacio (talk) 16:52, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

And maybe we could include the quote from Judge Calabresi, who sits with Sotomayor on the 2nd circuit.“Some lawyers just don’t like to be questioned by a woman,” Judge Calabresi added. “It was sexist, plain and simple.” TharsHammar ^Bits and^Pieces 16:54, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Uh, but what about the fact that other female judges like Sandra O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have no such complaints? That is something that needs to be reconciled with Calabresi's statement before we use it. Erich Mendacio (talk) 16:57, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Well Judge Newman and Judge Wesley also disagree with the claims brought up in the almanac. Wesley said his interactions with Judge Sotomayor had been “totally antithetical to this perception that has gotten some traction that she is somehow confrontational.” and Judge Newman said Judge Sotomayor frequently sent unusually detailed, closely reasoned and helpful memorandums critiquing their draft opinions. “She will offer substantive suggestions,” said Judge Jon O. Newman, “but she will not be tenacious in making sure the language comes out exactly her way.” TharsHammar ^Bits and^Pieces 17:10, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

This definitely does not belong on this page. This is a biography page. WP:BLP. If this discussion belongs anywhere on Wikipedia, it belongs on the Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination page, not here. 96.233.30.146 (talk) 02:26, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I've created "Judgeship" subsections under both the District Judge and Appeals Judge sections, where a general discussion of her judgeship can go. Her behavior, approach, temperament, etc. are definitely appropriate to discuss in this respect; this is a biographical aspect to her life, independent of whether a big issue gets made of it in the Supreme Court confirmation process or not. I've leaned heavily on the NYT story referenced above, as that seems the fairest of the ones I've seen and it has a bunch of people willing to be named on the record, which is important towards credibility. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:16, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

pronunciation of surname

That IPA looks suspiciously like educated Amurkin. The real IPA is probably more like /sɔtɔmɑ'jɔr/ where the final /r/ is aspirated and the last syllable stressed in an albeit slight, syllable-timed way. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.189.103.145 (talk) 00:55, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Racism etc. categories

User:JCDenton2052 has twice made this edit, which places this article into Category:Ethnocentrism, Category:Race and intelligence controversy, Category:Racism, and Category:Sexism. I do not believe any of these categories is appropriate. She's never written or said anything about race and intelligence, so that one is wrong. She's been accused by a fraction of the American political talk show class of the other three, but at this point, who hasn't? These categories are intended for articles that describe these phenomenon, or for people whose whole careers and public images are based on these themes, neither of which is the case here. I'm reverting again, but if anyone seriously believes these categories are appropriate, speak up. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:23, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

THey're not appropriate for this page. Maybe the nominatino page, but probably not there yet, either. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 18:38, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Ref that talks about her attitudes towards race

LA Times. Might be a good one because it kind of summarizes both sides. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 03:35, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

I've made the subject header less inflammatory. Because the LAT story isn't: it says she was a moderate student activist at Princeton and Yale Law, but hasn't let that affect her circuit court rulings. Most of this was already in the article, but I've added some bits here and there as well as the study on her discrimination rulings. Thanks for the pointer. Wasted Time R (talk) 04:33, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Sounds good. Nice work on the article, by the way. I haven't read it thoroughly, but it seems like you're doing a pretty good job of keeping it NPOV. I don't believe in including every bit of Rush Limbaugh criticism, but we should include some of the major republican points. - Peregrine Fisher (talk) (contribs) 04:55, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Libral Justice

This article needs to focus more on the fact that she's a libral justice. The american people need to know. No libral! No libral! No libral! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.18.38.30 (talk) 18:31, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

The correct spelling of this use of the term is "librul". Search the web and you'll see. Wasted Time R (talk) 22:14, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

"increased" latino representation

This is a very small point, but I noticed that the lede now reads "She was an activist for increased Latino representation at both schools." That is correct. But from both the lede and some of the discussion further down in the article, one might get the misimpression that Princeton and Yale Law already had a few Hispanic faculty members, and Sotomayor and other students were advocating for more to be hired (i.e. "increased" representation). In fact, at least at the time Sotomayor began her work on this issue, there was not a single full-time Latino professor, nor any class on Latin America anywhere at Princeton. At Yale Law, the number of full-time Hispanic faculty members was also zero. Jose Cabranes was Yale's General Counsel, and he taught a class at the law school but was not on the full-time faculty. Indeed it remains true today that Yale Law does not have a single Hispanic faculty member. I just mention this because I think it provides some context for why Sotomayor and other students would be advocating for some faculty representation. It's not as though there already were lots of Hispanics on the faculty and they wanted more. They just wanted to get hiring to begin. Anyway, I'm not saying the word "increased" is wrong, although we could say she was an activist for both schools to begin hiring Latino faculty. Maybe there's a place for some of these details later on in the article. - JRtx (talk) 05:53, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Your additions to the body of the article on this are good. As for the lede, I thought her student activism definitely merited inclusion in it, and was trying to come up with something succinct that described it. I'm not married to "increased" and am totally open to alternate/better wording. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:53, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

I've now changed this to "She was an activist pushing for hiring of Latino faculty at both schools." User:Jmundo removed the previous version with the edit comment "judgmental", but I don't agree; the body of the article establishes in some detail her activist role in this regard. Wasted Time R (talk) 04:22, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

On reflection, I'm not sure this does actually belong in the lead. I don't know if I would call "activist" a judgmental word, but I see Jmundo's point. It is a somewhat inflammatory word. To many (esp. conservatives), "activist" is an insult. I think "activist" is a fair factual description of some of Sotomayor's activities at Princeton and (to a lesser extent) at Yale, but without the context that is present later in the article, the sentence in the lede sort of leaps out, and suggests something quite different from what it turns out to be (i.e. sit-ins, protests, 60s-style "activism," militancy, that sort of thing). That's not what you mean by the word in this context, but the reader won't know that before reading the full article, which is getting pretty long. Also, it's not clear to me that this activism is important enough to make the lede anyway. There's a lot of stuff in the article that's arguably more important than these particular episodes in her life (especially at Yale, where any activism really was a very small part of the story of her time there). What do you think? If you really wanted to keep this in the lede, perhaps the wording could be changed, e.g. "She was an advocate for the hiring of Latino faculty at both schools" or something like that. But I'm not sure it belongs. - JRtx (talk) 08:02, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I've switched it to your latest formulation. But I definitely think it belongs. Her activism (even if we avoid that word) related to her Latina self was a big part of her student life, and has been the subject of press attention then and now. How many students ever file a formal complaint with a federal agency, or with an interviewing firm, and appear in both The New York Times and The Washington Post as a result? It helps to illustrate what kind of person she was, which is the goal of a biography. And we spend a lot of time on it in the article text, which the lede is supposed to accurately summarize. Wasted Time R (talk) 11:53, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Questionable Wording

I'm probably nitpicking here, but I'm a little offended by the wording in this sentence: "Working in the trial division, she prosecuted everything from shoplifting and prostitution to robberies, assaults, murders, and police brutality." To me, it compares police brutality to crimes equal to robberies and murders. Personally, I think it should be modified to be a little less 'range' sounding and more 'list' sounding, like "Working in the trial division, she prosecuted trials including shoplifting, prostitution, robberies, assaults, police brutality, and murders, among others." It's my opinion, so I thought I'd throw it out there instead of editing myself. --FLstream1 (talk) 01:18, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree, it didn't fit the framing. I've moved it elsewhere in the paragraph ... may change more, as I'm about to do further work on that period. Wasted Time R (talk) 01:36, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Publications listing for Berkeley Law speech/article

User:Flatterworld and I are in disagreement about how to list "A Latina Judge's Voice" in the "Publications" section; see this edit for the two approaches. The distinction is not trivial in my view, because it goes to the heart whether "A Latina Judge's Voice" was just a random speech (of which she's given many, not just this one) or was a carefully prepared lecture for a symposium that was going to be published afterward. Typically authors have a chance to revise their remarks before such publication, for instance, which as far as I know she didn't do. So it's more than just a speech, in my view. What do others think? Wasted Time R (talk) 11:44, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

A speech is a speech. The link is to a transcript of said speech. The NYT has a copy as well, which it lists under 'Speeches' in her Times Topic page: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/sonia_sotomayor/index.html Every article in the news media has referred to this particular speech as a speech, and of course people come to the Wikipedia article to find said speech. That's what we're here for: to help people find information. Lots of people gives lots of speeches which are carefully prepared - and later misunderstood. That's life. They're still speeches. Flatterworld (talk) 17:36, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

A speech is a speech until it's published as an article in a journal, as this one was. The link isn't a transcript, but an article reprint; as it says, "The text below is from the archives of the La Raza Law Journal." The Library of Congress lists it as an article here. If she made any changes/corrections before publishing it, they are present in what we are linking to. By publishing it in a journal, she converted a serious speech into an article, and that's how we should list it as well. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:30, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Plenty of work goes into either a formal speech (of the kind that sometimes might get reprinted in a journal) or an article. But I think it's work of a different kind. With a law review article, the author generally submits a draft, it goes through a process of being accepted or rejected by journals, and then it goes through a few rounds of edits between the author and the journal's editors, with the back-and-forth producing a more precise and carefully footnoted end product. In 2001, the approximate norm for law review articles was something like 20,000-40,000 words, with 200 to 400 footnotes. (If that sounds crazily long, read this 2005 statement in which the Harvard Law Review explains that it is imposing a limit and will publish no more articles longer than 35,000 words). Some, to be sure, are shorter. But "A Latina Judge's Voice" appears to be just under 4,000 words, which would be an extremely unusually short length for a law review article. It has no footnotes, which is not something you ever see in a law review article. In general it does not read like an article, but like a transcript. I'm sure a lot of work went into it, but unlike in the case of a law review article, almost all of that work was before the speech was given, and it was work by the judge and (presumably) one or more of her clerks. It did not go through the normal law review editing process. So while I appreciate what you are saying about this speech being printed in a regular, bona fide law review (in a special symposium issue, where it is listed specifically as the "Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture"), I don't think most legal scholars and judges whose speeches are reprinted in some journal would thereby consider those speeches to be "articles." So, I would go with the approach that draws a distinction between this speech and the other publications, which both sound like they are regular law review articles. - JRtx (talk) 01:36, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I know how many footnotes standard law review articles have. (If you look at Talk:Jill Biden#Reference insanity, you'll see a somewhat amusing dialog where I defend my heavy citation style by saying law reviews are worse.) I certainly wasn't claiming that "A Latina Judge's Voice" was a full-blown law review article, but that it was some kind of article. Anyway, we'll see if anyone else has an opinion; for now it will stay the Flatterworld way. Wasted Time R (talk) 02:12, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Just ran across another "speech" and added it, although I'm not entirely sure how significant it is. - JRtx (talk) 08:03, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I had looked at that one and passed ... but it can't hurt to include it, it does illustrate some of her personality and how she views the law school world. I did some work on the formatting and citing for it. I also added the book foreword that LoC lists; it's only two pages, but it's on an interesting, somewhat hot-button topic. And we listed all the forewords that John McCain has written in his article, which is FA, so there is precedent. Wasted Time R (talk) 12:29, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Media Matters and the "wise Latina" remark

I've taken out this addition to the article. First, Media Matters is not a reliable or neutral source when it comes to political analysis. They are pro-actively skewed and biased towards a particular viewpoint, and tend to argue that viewpoint in their analyses. If you want to try to find a neutral assessment of the speech, FactCheck would be a much better choice. Moreover, the purpose in this summary section should not be to debate what her speech and remark meant. For example, many people of all viewpoints believe that Sotomayor was indeed speaking about legal decisions in general, including apparently Gibbs and Obama, and if we start bringing in all these other interpretations, the section will go on forever. The purpose here is simply to describe the one issue that has taken off as the primary point of contention about her nomination. And "wise Latina" is clearly that issue. When Sotomayor herself explains what she meant by that, we can include it here. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:24, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Sotomayor did sort of clarify it yesterday, with her "ultimately and completely" quoted remark to Leahy, so I've included that in the article. Wasted Time R (talk) 13:40, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

If we're going to include ALL those 'interpretations' by others, you can certainly include that by Media Matters - which was actually based on her entire speech. 'Many people of all viewpoints'(!) simply copied the first ooh!ooh! report. Certainly Gibbs and Obama did NOT. If you can't edit dispassionately and without bias, perhaps you should work on another article. You do not own this article. Flatterworld (talk) 14:11, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the insults. Have you looked at the article's recent history? Do you know who is responsible for adding huge amounts of biographical material here, the vast majority of which are (justly) highly favorable to Sotomayor? You gotta be kidding. Wasted Time R (talk) 14:21, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Wasted Time and have again removed the Media Matters reference. First off, you cannot argue, really, that Media Matters is a politically skewed and agenda-driven organization -- using them for a source for anything should be seriously questioned. Second, the wording that was used in the article just was also biased and skewed. It said something about an important point that was left out and it added context to the speech that just was not there. This reference shouldn't be added back. jheiv (talk) 16:30, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

On this 'richness of her experience' remark: a story broke today that Sotomayor had included an earlier speech containing nearly identical language in her packet of speeches that she submitted to Senators in 1998 during her confirmation to the Appeals Court. (The earlier speech stated: "First, if Prof. Martha Minnow is correct, there can never be a universal definition of ‘wise.’ Second, I would hope that a wise woman with the richness of her experience would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion.”) At the time, no one objected. And the Republicans went over her record in 1998 with a fine-toothed comb, attacked many things in it and blocked her confirmation. All of a sudden this time around, Republicans have latched onto the same sentence and are making it into a big scandal. This seems like relevant context. It shows what a ridiculous, made-up scandal this is. 128.36.122.106 (talk) 19:42, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Human error and chaos theory both apply to political controversies – what gets overlooked or not thought of at one time can be seen and become obsessed about at a different time. The 1994 speech was probably screened by some Republican judiciary committee staff assistant who missed the text, or didn't think it important. The 2001 speech got noticed by someone and talked about and its importance gained critical mass once she was nominated to the Supreme Court. So it goes. Wasted Time R (talk) 21:50, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

a Puerto Rican separatist - not an American

Once again, from her own writing See http://ninthjustice.nationaljournal.com/2009/06/grading-sotomayors-senior-thes.php

There are also a few jarring elements that contrast to the pedagogical approach. First, I'm curious as to when Sotomayor ceased being a Puerto Rican nationalist who favors independence -- as she says she does in the preface. (The position, as she points out in the thesis, had received 0.6 percent in a 1967 referendum, the most recent such vote before she wrote the thesis.) I don't know that I've seen it reported anywhere that she favored Puerto Rican independence, which has always been very much a fringe position

Second, her unwillingness to call the Congress the U.S. Congress is bizarre -- in the thesis, it's always referred to as either the 'North American Congress' or the 'mainland Congress.' I guess by the language of her thesis, it should be said that she's seeking an appointment to the North American Supreme Court, subject to advice and consent of the North American Senate. This kind of rhetoric was very trendy, and not uncommon, among the Latin Americanist fringe of the academy.