Given that Sonia Sotomayor is an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, her memoir is naturally concerned with questions of morality, justice, and how to create a just and equitable society through legal means. However, Sotomayor doesn’t stop at simply articulating how justice works on a grander scale or how it plays out in the life of a lawyer in private practice or at the local DA’s office. Rather, Sotomayor makes the case that everyone, even people outside of the legal profession, have endless opportunities to uphold justice by behaving in ways that are good, moral, and helpful to others. Sotomayor positions this constant effort to give back and help others on a smaller scale as some of the most important work a person can do, even if a person also has the ability to enact change on a larger scale.
One of the many ways that a person can create these smaller positive changes in the world is to help make a path for others who hope to follow the same trajectory. Sotomayor recognizes that this is the only reason she knows to apply to Ivy League schools in the first place—a friend who graduated a year before her, Ken, calls her in the fall of her senior year and tells her to focus on the Ivies. Without Ken’s advice, Sotomayor would’ve had no idea what Ivy League schools even were, given that their Catholic high school pushes students toward religious colleges if they advocate for college at all. Sotomayor recognizes that by attending Princeton—and by joining the student groups that recruit and support new minority students—she can do exactly as Ken did and show other kids that it’s possible for a poor Latinx student to do well at a prestigious school. Visibility, she suggests, matters a great deal. Thus, through becoming the first Latinx person and one of the first female judges on the Supreme Court, Sotomayor is able to set an example for children who look like her or share her sex. Because she paved the way, they can more easily see themselves following in her footsteps.
However, Sotomayor suggests, it’s not enough to just be visible and to set an example. It’s also important to make it clear to others that racism, sexism, and other prejudice that holds many people back is both horrific and illegal, which she has the opportunity to do after a disastrous interview with a prestigious law firm while at Yale. During a dinner interview, a partner with the firm essentially suggests that Sotomayor wouldn’t be at Yale at all without affirmative action, implying that minority or female students aren’t as smart as the white and male students that the partner is used to interviewing. Rather than let the incident slide, Sotomayor reports it to a Yale student tribunal. When the tribunal rules in her favor and the firm eventually issues a public apology, she suggests that this sets an important precedent and a warning to other powerful firms and institutions: bad behavior like the partner exhibited won’t be tolerated by Yale. This, in turn, makes Yale a more welcoming place for minority students, as it shows that the school will stand up for its students when they face discrimination and prejudice. This incident allows Sotomayor to continue her project of helping others who will come after her, as her willingness to stand up for herself and seek recourse means that someone else might not face this issue at all.
Finally, through her observations and experiences over the course of her career, Sotomayor also comes to understand that employers and bosses have a responsibility to make the workplace more accessible, flexible, and accepting of women and mothers if society expects women to work. Though Sotomayor doesn’t suffer as much as some of her peers do due given that she never has children, Sotomayor still witnesses some of her female peers experience discrimination due to their sex or their reproductive choices. This is why in her capacity as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, she always allows the children of her clerks to call their parents at work—as the boss, she has the power to make these changes that might not rise to the level of something that might appear in front of a judge in court, but rather are small changes that she and others in charge can make to make the world a better, fairer place. By making small changes like these, Sotomayor proposes that it’s not enough to rule fairly on high profile court cases about affirmative action, discrimination, or workplace laws; laws and lawsuits alone won’t solve the world’s problems. Rather, everyone who has the power to help others should do so by setting an example, standing up for themselves and for others, and creating friendly, open environments for everyone.
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Morality, Justice, and Giving Back Quotes in My Beloved World
I often stewed with righteous anger over physical punishments—my own or others’—especially when they seemed disproportionate to the crime. I accepted what the Sisters taught in religion class: that God is loving, merciful, charitable, forgiving. That message didn’t jibe with adults smacking kids.
Now suddenly lessons seemed easier. It certainly didn’t hurt that I had spent the entire summer vacation with my nose in a book, hiding from my mother’s gloom, but there was another reason too. It was around that time that my mother made an effort to speak some English at home.
Our snitching often entailed phone calls to the hospital that must have driven my mother nuts, not to mention her supervisors, bless their forbearance. I’ve always believed phone calls from kids must be allowed if mothers are to feel welcome in the workplace, as anyone who has worked in my chambers can attest.
Minority kids, however, had no one but their few immediate predecessors: the first to scale the ivy-covered wall against the odds, just one step ahead ourselves, we would hold the ladder steady for the next kid with more talent than opportunity. The blacks, Latinos, and Asians at Princeton went back to their respective high schools, met with guidance counselors, and recruited promising students they knew personally.
By the time I got to Yale, I had met a few successful lawyers, usually in their role as professors. José, the first I had the chance to observe up close, not only transcended the academic role but also managed to uphold his identity as a Puerto Rican, serving vigorously in both worlds.
To be able to relate to jurors as their own sister or daughter might, with real appreciation of their concerns and the constraints upon their lives, often put me at an advantage facing an adversary from a more privileged background—a refreshing change after years of feeling the opposite. But even more important, that connection fed my sense of purpose. Each day I stood before a jury, I felt myself a part of the society I served.
Ultimately, I accept that there is no perfect substitute for the claim that a parent and a child have on each other’s heart. But families can be made in other ways, and I marvel at the support and inspiration I’ve derived from the ones I’ve built of interlocking circles of friends. In their constant embrace I have never felt alone.
Call it what you like: discipline, determination, perseverance, the force of will. Even apart from his saying so, I knew that it had made all the difference in my life. [...]
What Nelson saw driving me arises from a different kind of aspiration: the desire to do for others, to help make things right for them.
Fran’s handing me the Fendi case as my first crack at civil litigation was a tribute not only to her personal generosity but to the nature of Pavia & Harcourt, where freehanded collaboration was ingrained in the culture. The people I worked with were comfortable enough in their own skin to share clients and knowledge easily. That spirit of transparent teamwork was a joy to me, and I strove to be as open and helpful to others as Fran and Dave were to me.
