In May 2009, President Barack Obama named Sonia Sotomayor as his choice to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. One bump on her way to achieving a 68-31 Confirmation vote by the Senate was dealing with a ““Wise Latina”” line that Sotomayor had been dropping into public speeches between 1994 and 2003. Sotomayor clarified during the hearings to a sympathetic Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) that “[w]hile life experience shapes who one is, "ultimately and completely" a judge follows the law regardless of personal background.
That statement seems somewhat ironic as Vice President Joe Biden’s official swearing in ceremony on January 20th 2012 was moved from Noon as is directed in the US Constitution to 8:15 a.m. so that Associate Justice Sotomayor could maintain her other obligation, a book signing appearance in Manhattan that afternoon for her autobiography “My Beloved World” (“Mi mundo adorado”).
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| Justice Sonia Sotomayor swearing in Vice President Joe Biden, January 20, 2013 8:15 a.m. |
Other sitting Supreme Court Justices have published best-selling books while sitting on the Nation’s High Court, as Associate Justice Clarence Thomas had in 2007 with his memoirs “My Grandfather’s Son”. But these extracurricular activities should not impede on the duties which accompany the public office which one has been entrusted. It seems troubling to rearrange constitutionally set schedules to accommodate a personal P.R. appearance.
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