News Release from University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Jan. 11, 2012

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor will spend a week in Hawai’i from Jan. 29-Feb. 3 as part of the Jurist-in-Residence program at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

Justice Sotomayor will be the honored guest at an event for the Hawaiʻi Bar, hosted by the Hawai‘i State Bar Association, and she will also be guest of honor at a breakfast with Hawaiʻi Women Lawyers and the Hawai‘i Women’s Legal Foundation. In addition, she will talk with Farrington High School students and answer questions from students across the state.

During her visit to the Law School she will teach classes, judge a Moot Court practice, and meet with faculty and students throughout the week. The Jurist-in-Residence program, founded in 1987 and sponsored since 2000 by the Honolulu law firm of Case Lombardi & Pettit, brings Supreme Court Justices to the Richardson Law School to meet with students and faculty, as well as members of the Judiciary and the Hawai‘i State Bar. Recent past participants have included Associate Justices Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr., Stephen A. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Anthony M. Kennedy. The program was founded with the help of Myron H. Bright, Senior Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Justice Sotomayor was nominated to be an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court by President Barack Obama on May 26, 2009 and she took her seat on the Court on August 8, 2009. She already had a distinguished record in the federal judiciary: on November 27, 1991, she was nominated to the Federal District Court, Southern District of New York. by President George H. W. Bush, and she was sworn in on October 2, 1992; on June 25, 1997, she was nominated by President William J. Clinton to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and she was sworn in on October 21, 1998.

Justice Sotomayor graduated Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude from Princeton University and received her law degree from Yale Law School. Before becoming a judge, she was an Assistant District Attorney, New York County District Attorney’s Office, and an associate and partner at Pavia & Harcourt, New York City.

She is a trustee of Princeton University, a member of the American and Hispanic National Bar Associations, the Puerto Rican and New York Bar Associations, and the National Association of Women Judges.

Justice Sotomayor was born in the Bronx, New York and is the daughter of Juan Luis Sotomayor and Celina Baez Sotomayor. Her brother, Juan Sotomayor Jr., is a physician in Syracuse, New York.

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