Judge Sotomayor Quotes

#1. To hear both critics and defenders talk about the fitness of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, you'd think the most successful Supreme Court justices had been warm, collegial consensus-builders. But history tells a different story.

Noah Feldman

#2. The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law.

Sonia Sotomayor

#3. The worst thing you want is a willy-nilly judge who is swayed by the political whims of the era or the time. What you want is a judge who is thinking about what he or she is doing and is thinking about it in a principled way.

Sonia Sotomayor

#4. In my first week as a U.S. senator, I had the privilege of participating in the Supreme Court confirmation hearing for Judge Sonia Sotomayor.

Al Franken

#5. I did extensive, extensive recordings and made a classical CD-ROM set, which is still on the market. For ten years, it was by itself as the cream of the crop of samples.

Miroslav Vitous

#6. Reaching a conclusion has to start with what the parties are arguing, but examining in all situations carefully the facts as they prove them or not prove them, the record as they create it, and then making a decision that is limited to what the law says on the facts before the judge.

Sonia Sotomayor

#7. Seems to me that this business, for actors anyway, is not so much about whether or not you do good work. It's about whether or not you get the chance to do good work.

Hugh Laurie

#8. I accept the proposition that ... to judge is an exercise of power and because ... there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives
no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging, I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions.

Sonia Sotomayor

#9. It is very important when you judge to recognize that you have to stay impartial. That's what the nature of my job is. I have to unhook myself from my emotional responses and try to stay within my unemotional, objective persona.

Sonia Sotomayor

#10. I wouldn't approach the issue of judging in the way the president does. Judges can't rely on what's in their heart. They don't determine the law. Congress makes the law. The job of a judge is to apply the law.

Sonia Sotomayor

#11. The duty and the task of a writer are those of an interpreter.

Marcel Proust

#12. I've never written, though I thought I wrote, never loved, though I thought I loved, never done anything but wait outside the closed door.

Marguerite Duras

#13. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences.

Sonia Sotomayor

#14. With one decision, Judge Sotomayor changed the entire dispute. Her ruling rescued the 1995 baseball season and forced the parties to resume real negotiations.

David Cone

#15. Arguing with one's self is beneficial.
Out of all the million voices in my head screaming for your death, you're lucky I heeded the one that wants to spare you this time.

Anonymous

#16. Judge Sotomayor is a liberal judicial activist of the first order who thinks her own personal political agenda is more important that the law as written.

Wendy E. Long

#17. I've always said I would want to be a funeral director if I wasn't an actor.

Torrey DeVitto