by Phillip L. Velez

Created on: June 03, 2009

President Barack Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor because she is very well qualified to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Judge Sotomayor's story is that of the American Dream and many hard working citizens will be able to relate to life experiences. She was raised in a Bronx public housing project by Puerto Rican parents and attended a Catholic high school. She then won a scholarship to Princeton University and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She then earned a law degree from Yale University. At Yale Law School, Judge Sotomayor served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal.

After law school Sotomayor served five years as an Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan and then entered private practice in 1984. In 1992, Republican U.S. President George H. W. Bush appointed Judge Sotomayor to the District Court for the Southern District of New York. In 1998 Judge Sotomayor became the first Latina to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit when President William J. Clinton appointed her to the post. She received broad bipartisan approval for both positions.

Judge Sotomayor represents the fasting growing segment of the U.S. population: Latinos. If confirmed, Judge Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic to hold a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. According to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, by the year 2030 the Latino population will make up 25 percent of the total U.S. population.

According to Wikipedia, Hispanics and Latinos presently constitute 15.1% of the total U.S. population, or 45.4 million people. People of Hispanic or Latino heritage have lived continuously in the U.S. since the 1565 founding of St. Augustine, Florida by the Spanish, the longest among European American ethnic groups and secondlongest of all U.S. ethnic groups, after American Indians. The Hispanic presence can even be said to date from half a century earlier than St. Augustine, if San Juan, Puerto Rico is considered to be the oldest Spanish settlement, and the oldest city, in the U.S.

There have been a total of 110 Supreme Court Justices, of which two were African-American and two have been women. The U.S. is long overdue for a Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court Justice. President Obama made a wise choice in selecting Judge Sonia Sotomayor because she an amazing life story, has excellent judicial experience, is a wonderful example of the country's diversity, and recognizes a growing and politically influential segment of the U.S. population.

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