T he Honorable Sonia Sotomayor (1954 - ) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009 following her leadership as an assistant district attorney, years in private practice, and a distinguished judicial career. Justice Sotomayor is the third woman to be appointed to the Supreme Court and the first Hispanic and Latina Justice in the Court’s 230- year history.

Sonia Sotomayor was born to a working-class family in the Bronx, New York where they lived in a low-income housing project and experienced financial hardship. But this didn’t stop her mother from emphasizing the importance of education—and it paid off. Justice Sotomayor went on to graduate summa cum laude with a B.A. from Princeton University in 1976. Three years later, she earned a J.D. from Yale Law School where she was a contributing editor of the Yale Law Journal.

Thereafter, Sotomayor served as Assistant District Attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office from 1979–1984, and litigated international commercial matters in New York City at Pavia & Harcourt as an associate and later partner from 1984–1992. In 1991, President George H. W. Bush nominated her to the U.S. District Court Southern District of New York; she served in that role from 1992–1998. Judge Sotomayor continued her judicial service from 1998-2009 on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

On May 26, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. She assumed this role on August 8, 2009.

During her tenure on the Supreme Court, Justice Sotomayor has been identified with concern for the rights of defendants and called for reform of the criminal justice system. She’s also made impassioned dissents on issues of race, gender, and ethnic identity. Justice Sotomayor has received multiple honorary degrees and other awards, including Bryn Mawr College’s Katherine Hepburn Award that honors women who change the world.

Biography provided by the National Women’s Hall of Fame