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Quote by Sonia Sotomayor

“My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”

Quote by Sonia Sotomayor

Author

Sonia Sotomayor

Sonia Sotomayor is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the first Hispanic woman to serve in this role. Born on June 25, 1954, she has a background that includes a challenging upbringing in the South Bronx, New York, which fueled her passion for law. Sotomayor graduated from Princeton University and Yale Law School, and her career has been characterized by a strong commitment to public service and civil rights. She has served as a federal judge and has been a vocal advocate for equality and justice, leaving a lasting impact on a variety of legal issues. more

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“Since I have difficulty defining merit and what merit alone means - and in any context, whether it's judicial or otherwise - I accept that different experiences in and of itself, bring merit to the system.”

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“The schools that suffer are the schools in, in poor neighborhoods. They are the neighborhoods with the greatest need, with the parents struggling to work and to make ends meet. They don't have enough resources to give, they don't have enough resources to pay more, and these are the neighborhoods that go first.”

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“The worst thing you want is a willy-nilly judge who is swayed by the political whims of the era or the time. What you want is a judge who is thinking about what he or she is doing and is thinking about it in a principled way.”

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“There are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action - to try to balance out those effects.”

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“What's quote-unquote a 'good' lawyer, doctor, or whatever the profession is. And if you're a male who grew up professionally in a male-dominated profession then your image of what a good lawyer is is a male image.”

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

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Author:Sonia Sotomayor