Why is sonia sotomayor famous

Other cases may be included in this decision if they set or overturn an established legal precedent, are a major point of discussion in an election campaign, receive substantial media attention related to the justice's ruling, or based on our editorial judgment that the case is noteworthy.

For more on how we decide which cases are noteworthy, click here. Since she joined the court through the term, Sotomayor authored the majority opinion in a decision eight times and authored a dissent in an decision 14 times. The table below details these cases by year. Justice Sotomayor authored a majority opinion in Salinas v. Sotomayor authored a majority opinion in this case holding that the Crow Tribe's hunting rights under an treaty did not expire upon Wyoming's statehood.

Sotomayor wrote: [45]. Justice Sotomayor wrote the dissent in a decision to uphold a Michigan constitutional amendment to ban any preferential selection based on sex or race, also known as affirmative action.

Sotomayor went on to agree with the majority that Michigan did nothing wrong in following the political process to offer an amendment, but wrote that the issue lies in the amendment itself. She wrote that the amendment takes away the ability of university board members to create admission standards that aid minorities but allows ones that aid athletes and legacies, effectively creating uneven admission standards. During more than a decade as a circuit court judge, Sotomayor heard appeals on more than 3, cases and wrote in excess of opinions for the majority.

She had five of those decisions reviewed by the United States Supreme Court , with three of them overturned and two upheld.

A survey by University of Texas at Austin law professor Stefanie Lindquist found her judgeship to have been moderate with respect to political leanings. Lindquist studied her majority opinions from to and found that 38 percent of her opinions could be clearly defined as liberal, while 49 percent of them fell clearly on the conservative end of the spectrum.

She tended to be more conservative in criminal cases, where Supreme Court precedent encourages appellate judges to be pro-prosecution. On civil rights issues such as race, gender, and immigration, on the other hand, Lindquist's study found that Sotomayor tended to be more liberal.

Sotomayor joined a finding in favor of the city of New Haven rejecting a lawsuit filed by 17 white firefighters and one Hispanic firefighter claiming race discrimination by the city. New Haven denied promotions following a promotion examination that yielded no black candidates eligible for advancement. In a decision, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned the decision, stating the decision to cancel the promotions violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act , which guarantees equal employment opportunity.

The court found that Sotomayor's ruling would allow the city to "experiment" with tests until they found one that produced "a more desirable racial distribution. Sotomayor found in favor of environmental group Riverkeeper, which challenged an EPA ruling on the Clean Water Act's "best technology" rule involving power plants' need to intake water as weighed against the risk to aquatic life in surrounding waters.

In her ruling, she held: "Congress has already specified the relationship between cost and benefits in requiring that the technology designated by EPA be the best available. Bush R —Sotomayor found that the federal government is within its rights to deny federal aid to foreign organizations that support or perform abortions. She dismissed claims by the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy that the Mexico City Policy violated the First Amendment right to association as well as Fifth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection.

In her finding, Sotomayor cited the Foreign Assistance Act of , which authorizes the president "to furnish assistance, on such terms and conditions as he may determine, for voluntary population planning," as well as multiple Supreme Court precedents. In her decision, Sotomayor wrote, "The Supreme Court has made clear that the government is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position, and can do so with public funds. In this case, Sotomayor found that an inmate living in a halfway house could sue a government contractor for forcing him to climb five flights of stairs despite a heart condition after the inmate suffered a heart attack, fell down the stairs, and injured himself.

Sotomayor held "extending Bivens liability to reach private corporations furthers [its] overriding purpose: providing redress for violations of constitutional rights.

The Supreme Court overturned Sotomayor's decision in a 5 to 4 ruling, stating that only individual agents, not corporations, could be sued for such violations. Sotomayor wrote several high-profile rulings regarding the Major League Baseball strike of , the Wall Street Journal' s publishing of the suicide note left by former Clinton White House counsel Vince Foster, and copyright issues related to a trivia book about the television show Seinfeld.

As a federal district judge, Sotomayor had one of her decisions overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States. The case is often used in law schools as a modern application of the fair use doctrine. Sotomayor ruled in favor of The New York Times when it was sued by freelance journalists claiming the newspaper did not have the right to include their work in the electronic archival database LexisNexis.

Judge Sotomayor's decision to grant a temporary injunction against the Major League Baseball owners on March 31, , ended the day baseball strike of The injunction prevented the owners from installing replacement players and temporarily reinstated a five-year-old collective bargaining agreement allowing the season to take place and allowing players and owners to come to a new agreement nearly a year later.

In , Judge Sotomayor ruled in favor of the Wall Street Journal , allowing the newspaper to print a photocopy of the final note written by Clinton White House deputy counsel Vince Foster, who died in Sotomayor ruled that the public interest in the Foster story outweighed any violation of his family's privacy.

The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles. Her nomination was confirmed unanimously on August 11, , making her the youngest judge to join the court.

She continued to gain recognition as she took on high interest cases of copyright infringement, setting the standard in the fair use doctrine in Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc. Carol Publishing Group. Over the next decade, she gained a reputation for her attention to detail and straightforwardness.

Sotomayor was dedicated to helping the next generation of law students by teaching at New York University from , and Columbia Law School from Her next journey began when a seat opened up on the Supreme Court. This made her the first Hispanic and third woman to serve on the Supreme Court, and her confirmation was celebrated by the Hispanic community, Democrats, and Liberals alike. She went straight to work with her first case, Citizens United v.

Federal Election Commission, where she dissented from the majority that was in favor of the rights of corporations in campaign finance. Over the next five years, Sotomayor became known for her concerns for the rights of defendants, dissenting on issues of race, ethnicity, and gender, and calls for criminal justice reform.

She has notably fought for the defense of affirmative action, which she has credited in part for her admission to Princeton and Yale. She ruled in the majority in Obergefell v. Hodges, calling for the legalization of same-sex marriage in all 50 states.

Her strong will, respect for the judicial process, and desire to make an impact are traits that continue to make her time in the court influential. The Bronxdale Houses where she grew up were renamed in her honor and she has become a best-selling author.

Accessed 08 August Hodges that made same sex marriage legal in all 50 states. In June , Sotomayor made headlines when she wrote a scathing dissent for Utah v. Edward Joseph Strieff, Jr. The court ruled in its decision "that evidence found by police officers after illegal stops may be used in court if the officers conducted their searches after learning that the defendants had outstanding arrest warrants," according to the New York Times.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, which is considered a major victory for the police. It says that your body is subject to invasion while courts excuse the violation of your rights. It implies that you are not a citizen of a democracy but the subject of a carceral state, just waiting to be cataloged.

The Court insisted in its opinion that this incident was isolated, but Sotomayor emphatically challenged this assertion and said this decision not only chisels away at protections under the Fourth Amendment but also will affect minorities and low-income individuals disproportionately. In April , Justice Sotomayor suffered a shoulder injury from an accidental fall. Regardless, she was present for all major arguments that came before the court for the duration of the month, including Trump v.

Hawaii , the administration's controversial travel-ban case, before undergoing surgery on May 1. The justice was back in the news the following year, after breaking the Supreme Court's new "two-minute rule" that permits a lawyer to begin arguments for two minutes without interruption. Her eagerness to jump into the fray came during a case to determine whether the state of Kansas infringed on federal law by prosecuting an immigrant for identity theft under a state statute.

We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. Elena Kagan is a Supreme Court justice and the first woman to serve as solicitor general of the United States of America.

In , she earned a J. In , President George H. Bush nominated her to the U.