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a race- and color-blind way that ignores these very differences that
in other contexts we laud.”
She said that, while she aspired to fairness, she questioned
whether true neutrality was achievable. She quoted a favorite line of
Sandra Day O’Connor’s that a wise old man and a wise old woman
would come to the same conclusion on a case, but Sotomayor begged
to differ, first because there could never be a universally agreed-upon
definition of wise. “Second, 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,” she said. Her critics homed in on the word better and not the
very next sentence explaining her point: “Let us not forget that wise
men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases
which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society.”
Amid all the angling and backbiting, President Obama kept his
own counsel. According to Jonathan Alter’s The Promise, Michelle
Obama favored Sotomayor, “whose experience as an isolated
minority student at Princeton mirrored her own.” The president
also found some of the criticism familiar. “Maybe because of my
own background in legal and academic circles—where I’d met my
share of highly credentialed, high-IQ morons and had witnessed
firsthand the tendency to move the goal posts when it came to
promoting women and people of color,” he wrote in A Promised
Land, “I was quick to dismiss such concerns.” He went for it.
That summer, Ginsburg, who had gotten to know Soto-
mayor while overseeing the Second Circuit and wasmore
than ready to cease being the only woman on the Court,
took the opportunity to tell The New York Times Maga-
zine’s Emily Bazelon, “The notion that Sonia is an aggres-
sive questioner—what else is new? Has anybody watched
Scalia or Breyer up on the bench?” Asked about Soto-
mayor proudly describing herself as the beneficiaryof
affirmative action, Ginsburg replied, “So am I.” Shesaid
she never would have become the first tenured womanat
Columbia Law School without the Nixon administration’s
affirmative-action policies.
At her nomination hearings, Sotomayor was so muted
and minimalist in her responses that liberals brieflywor-
ried she was actually a moderate. It did the trick withthe
Senate: She was confirmed 68-31 with nine Republican
votes. In the years that followed, Sotomayor didn’t hideher
feelings about that time. “It was very, very painful bothon
the court of appeals and on the Supreme Court nomination
process that people kept accusing me of not being smart
enough,” she said at an event. “Now could someone explain
to me, other than that I’m Hispanic, why that wouldbe?”
For all of her ideological affinity with Ginsburg, thelatter
came from another generation and a more formal world.
“I sit and listen to my colleagues talking about all theoperasthey
go to. They can name every opera singer; Ruth BaderGinsburg
[can name every one] that she’s ever heard, what performanceand
where. I can’t do that,” Sotomayor said in 2014. “Whenyoumove
from one world to the next, you can sometimes feel alienfromall.”
At one point, Sotomayor kept two chairs and a tableoutsideher
chambers on the Court’s second floor. “Justice Kennedylovedrefer-
ring to this as Cantina Sotomayor,” recalled a formerSupreme
Court clerk. Kennedy once even pretended to order adrink.
On the Second Circuit, Sotomayor had easily madefriendswith
judges across the aisle. The Supreme Court was chillier,though
she was on first-name terms with the elevator operators,who
would light up when they saw her. According to Joan Biskupic’s
2013 biography of Sotomayor, Breaking In, the justice’s unex-
pected salsa routine at an event for clerks got the recently wid-
owed Ginsburg on her feet, if reluctantly, but left others cold.
“They thought she was calling too much attention toherself,
revealing a self-regard that challenged more than the Court’s
decorum,” Biskupic wrote. “One justice and one top Court officer
said separately that it was just too much blurring of the lines
between the clerks, who traditionally took the stage at the party,
and the justices, who sat in judgment in the audience.”
Sotomayor, it should be noted, considers herself rhythmless and
came to salsa late, after discovering she could swing it with a strong
lead. “I have a facility that some of my colleagues would find very
strange,” she said at her Yale Law reunion in 2014. “I can follow.”
Beside her, Justice Samuel Alito widened his eyes. “It’s a revelation
to know that Sonia likes to follow,” he said. Referring to the private
meetings where the justices take initial votes on cases, he said,
“I think we’re going to start dancing in the conference room.”
Uprooted from her life and social circle in the West Village—
Sotomayor is divorced and has no children—she continued making
her clerks feel welcome, inviting them and their partners over to her
D.C. condo, in a part of town she compared to the East Village,
hosting movie nights and grilling hot dogs and chicken in the
shared courtyard. She once drove two hours to be one of the first
people to visit the hospital after a clerk’s wife had a baby. And she
keeps in touch; when one former clerk was diagnosed with cancer,
she offered to drop off food. Her new life also brought with it a
financial security she hadn’t been able to enjoy even as an appeals-
court judge. The year she received her $1.175 million book advance,in 20 10,shewastheonlyjusticetolist credit-carddebtonher
disclosureforms;sheapparentlyusedtheadvancetowipesome
dentaldebtintherangeof$15,000to$50,000.
Aboveall,shewenttowork.“Shewillworkyouunderthetable,”
saysa formerSecondCircuitclerk.Courtsareinundatedwith
claims,includingfrompeoplerepresentingthemselves,whichare
knownasprose.Theseareoftenprisoners,thepoor, orboth,and
unlikeat theSupremeCourt, wherethejusticescananddodecide
nottotake thevastmajority ofcases,courts ofappealsarerequired
toheareverycasethat comestothem.“I realizea lotofthissounds
hagiographic,andI amwary of that,” saystheformerclerk.“Butthis
is someonewho,ineveryprosecasethat camebeforeher, duginto
everything—the law, the minutiae—the same way she would in a
case litigated by a top Supreme Court advocate.”
From the beginning, Sotomayor shined on criminal-justice cases.
She’s the only one of her colleagues to have served as a federal trial
judge, a grubby job by elite lawyer standards. Many of the other“Coming ontothe Court in the firstplace meant therewere glass ceilings toshatter. It seems thatshe’s still standingon the shards.”