People who live in difficult circumstances need to know that happy endings are possible. Page 1.
You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.
Same way I have my entire life. Keep my family and friends close. My Latino friends close. I visit the island [Puerto Rico] as often as I humanly can.
It's not the heart that compels conclusions in cases, it's the law.
I'm a common law judge. I believe in deciding every case on its facts, not on a legal philosophy. And I believe in deciding each case in the most limited way possible, because common law judges have a firm belief that the best development of the law is the one that lets society show you the next step, and that next step is in the new facts that each case presents.
Without question, so many people, throughout my life, never think of Puerto Rico as part of the United States.
I am growing to love DC.This [Washington] is a beautiful city. I think every citizen should come see their capital. A lot of the museums are free, there are restaurants that are reasonably priced.
When I talk to kids, I often tell them, "I'm going to disappoint you someday. I won't be worth my salt as a judge if I don't render at least one decision that makes you unhappy. Because if I'm following the law - and I don't write them - there has to be some decision you won't like. Please don't judge any person by one act. Take from them the good and don't concentrate on the little things that make you unhappy." That's my approach to family and friends, too.
That tide of insecurity would come in and out over the years, sometimes stranding me for a while but occasionally lifting me just beyond what I thought I could acomplish. Either way, it would wash over the same bedrock certainty: ultimately, I know myself.
I didn't know I had a sense of limitation until I got into the greater world.
Even though Article IV of the Constitution says that treaties are the 'supreme law of the land,' in most instances they're not even law.
I honestly felt no envy or resentment, only astonishment at how much of a world there was out there and how much of it others already knew. The agenda for self-cultivation that had been set for my classmates by their teachers and parents was something I'd have to develop for myself.
My job as a prosecutor is to do justice. And justice is served when a guilty man is convicted and an innocent man is not.
In the wider context, what I believe I was - the point I was making was that our life experiences do permit us to see some facts and understand them more easily than others.
When I'm concentrating, I can be fixed in place for hours. In fact, there was a joke in my office that everybody would come and chat outside my door because they knew - no matter how loud they talked - if I was concentrating, it would not disturb me at all.
One of the other reasons for writing this book [My Beloved World] was to hold on to the person you first met. More of the world knows about me now and follows me in a way that never happened before. I didn't want me, the inside of me, to change. Because I liked Sonia, the Sonia who has been. So another reason for writing the book was to hold on to that - whatever the best in Sonia was, to try to capture it.
My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
Sometimes, idealistic people are put off the whole business of networking as something tainted by flattery and the pursuit of selfish advantage. But virtue in obscurity is rewarded only in Heaven. To succeed in this world you have to be known to people.
That's why we have appellate judges that are more than one judge because each of us, from our life experiences, will more easily see different perspectives argued by parties. But judges do consider all of the arguments of litigants. I have. Most of my opinions, if not all of them, explain to parties by the law requires what it does.
I am willing to bet that there are some Puerto Ricans who don’t know about [their status].
I think there's a large segment of the mainland population that does not really understand the number of territories that are part of the United States.
There's a great variety of people in Washington, but I think because of the great concentration of people in New York, that variety is more visible. You walk the streets and there are people of every color, shape and size, ethnic background, religion, it doesn't matter. It's always present.
I am growing to love DC. But the core of Sonia is a New Yorker.
To the extent that the parents who send their children to these [Catholic] schools are parents like my own, who actually have faith in the church. Faith that it will provide their children with safety, a decent education and values about life and others. This is an institution that stands for all good in the world.
I am eternally grateful to all of the Latino groups outside of the Puerto Rican community, but including the Puerto-Rican community, who came to support me during the process [of nomination].
