WASHINGTON (By
Joan Biskupic, USA Today) December 29,
2009 ― When Lin-Manuel Miranda
saw Sonia Sotomayor dining in the back
of a small Long Island restaurant, he
seized the chance to tell her how
"incredibly proud" he and the Hispanic
community were of her.
"I went up to her and said, 'I'm Lin. I
wrote that show In the Heights,' " the
writer-actor, who like Sotomayor is of
Puerto Rican heritage, recalled of the
encounter with her shortly before she
was confirmed in August as the first
Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
Sotomayor's journey from a Bronx housing
project to the pinnacle of the U.S.
justice system is reminiscent of
Miranda's own Tony-Award-winning
musical, which portrays a Hispanic from
the heavily Dominican Washington Heights
neighborhood in Manhattan. The girl has
won a scholarship to Stanford and faces
the pressure of being a "first" out of
the neighborhood.
"I understand what unbelievable odds
Sotomayor faced and that her family
faced," Miranda says of the connection
he feels to the new justice. "Her
parents had to make miracles happen. My
parents had to make miracles happen."
Sotomayor thanked Miranda, he says, and
asked him to sit at her table for a
while. She told him she had seen his
play — twice.
The chance encounter illustrates how
Sotomayor's community has embraced her
and how she, in turn, has shown a desire
to sustain and celebrate the bonds with
her people. In four months as a justice,
she has reveled in her status as a role
model and inspiration to Hispanic. She
attended a National Hispanic Foundation
for the Arts gala and chose Hispanic
magazine as the one media outlet for
which she would sit for photographs.
This month, she traveled to Puerto Rico,
her parents' homeland, to meet with
territory and U.S. judges there. She
announced the trip with news releases
printed in Spanish and English — a first
for the court.
In her first opinion, issued this month,
Sotomayor took a step that could signal
an intention to raise awareness of some
Hispanic-related issues at the court as
well. Sotomayor invoked the phrase
"undocumented immigrants" — a first for
a Supreme Court opinion. Typically, the
justices have referred to Mexicans and
others who have entered the USA without
proper visas as "illegal" workers.
Such moves could continue to affect the
tone of her opinions. Based on her
status as the first Hispanic and how she
carries out that role, her legacy over
the years may be more multifaceted than
that of most justices and extend beyond
how she votes on individual cases.
'Two things I could not change'
Miranda is one of the many Hispanics who
have been excited by her appointment.
Carlos Ortiz, a friend of Sotomayor's
and chairman of the Hispanic National
Bar Association's Supreme Court
committee, worked for decades to get a
Hispanic justice named to the high
court. Sotomayor, he says, represents
the dreams of many: "She carries the
hopes and aspirations of more than 50
million people. … This is someone who
has traveled great distances — not
literally but metaphorically."
Sotomayor has made clear she understands
that role. When President Obama offered
her the nomination, he asked her to
promise him two things, she later
recounted to C-SPAN: "The first was to
remain the person I was, and the second
was to stay connected to my community. I
said to him that those were two easy
promises to make, because those two
things I could not change."
Since she was sworn in Aug. 8, Sotomayor
has had only a few opportunities to
influence the law. The court is in an
early stage of its annual term and has
issued four signed opinions.
Yet she has quickly become a forceful
presence during oral arguments. Even
from her end-of-the-bench position as
the most junior justice, her engagement
with the give-and-take is immediately
apparent to courtroom spectators.
She wrote the first signed opinion of
the 2009-10 term in a dispute over when
a judge's order that information is not
covered by the attorney-client privilege
may be appealed. In a straightforward
opinion signed in full by all of her
colleagues except Justice Clarence
Thomas, Sotomayor said the participants
in a case have no immediate right to
appeal and must wait until the end of a
trial to raise the issue.
The Dec. 8 case of Mohawk Industries v.
Carpenter began when a shift supervisor
at a manufacturing plant was fired after
telling the human resources department
that the company was hiring illegal
workers, or as Sotomayor wrote,
"undocumented immigrants."
"I don't know whether it was deliberate
or instinctive," says Cristina
Rodriguez, a New York University law
professor teaching immigration law at
Yale this semester. Yet Rodriguez notes
that "undocumented or unauthorized
immigrant" is the preferred term among
immigrant rights' advocates.
Sotomayor declined to answer a question
about why she used the phrase.
Previous 'firsts'
Sotomayor's early focus on her community
differs from that of other "firsts" on
the Supreme Court, such as Thurgood
Marshall, the first African American,
and Sandra Day O'Connor, the first
woman.
Marshall, who was appointed by President
Lyndon Johnson in 1967, was reluctant to
continue some of his connections to the
African-American community, says Harvard
law professor Mark Tushnet, a Marshall
biographer. "He did maintain his
friendships, but he was concerned about
attracting criticism about partiality,"
Tushnet says.
Marshall's "concern was for public
perceptions, not for his own identity,"
he says. "In 1967, the risk of adverse
public reaction among a significant
segment of the white community was
higher than it is with Justice Sotomayor
today."
O'Connor, who served from 1981 to 2006,
was a prominent role model for women,
yet she was not conspicuously tied to
women's groups, and her initial fame in
Washington was broad. "She is the Number
One celebrity in this town," Justice
Lewis Powell wrote to his family during
her first month on the bench.
Ortiz says one explanation for
Sotomayor's emphasis may lie in her
bonds within her community.
"Hispanics don't want to lose who they
are and where they came from on the way
to where they're going," he says.
It was a reference to familial
connections that struck actor-writer
Miranda when he heard Sotomayor speak
the day President Obama nominated her.
As she appeared before a television
audience, the nominee, who won
scholarships first to Princeton, then to
Yale law school, credited her mother for
her success.
In a telephone interview from Madrid,
Miranda recalled, "When she told the
story of her mother, I was bawling, like
a little kid with a skinned knee. "
