Judge Sotomayor Quotes & Sayings

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

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

There are two things that I know for certain guys are good for: pushing swings and killing insects. — Carrie Fisher

Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, brain and spinal cord disorders, diabetes, cancer, at least 58 diseases could potentially be cured through stem cell research, diseases that touch every family in America and in the world. — Rosa DeLauro

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

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

I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences, but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate. — Sonia Sotomayor

I like things that sound like maybe they shouldn't belong. — Mary Timony

And Mary, what of other men? There are no other men because my heart has gone out to you. And if you don't laugh I'll tell you what i think. I won't laugh. I think it's a fine instrument that God made for the poor likes of us to enjoy. — J.P. Donleavy

I was really surprised when I was told that my grandmother did not come to see me till a month after my birth. I was born seven years after my only sister Chandranshu, and my birth was a big disappointment for her. — Saina Nehwal

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. — Sonia Sotomayor

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

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

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

The task of a judge is not to make the law - it is to apply the law. — Sonia Sotomayor

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

As a Catholic, you can have two views on capital punishment. You can think, let Caesar do what Caesar needs to do, and the law says you can impose capital punishment, so you impose it. You can [also] be a Catholic who says we can't kill, we can't kill babies and we can't kill adults. If you let a decision be driven by your personal views, then you are not doing what a judge needs to do, which is enforce the laws of the society that you are in. But you can control your own behavior, and that is the choice that the church and God gives us - what kind of people are we going to be. — Sonia Sotomayor

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

The Danes don't take themselves seriously at all and look for the joke in everything. Us Scots are on the same line of latitude and have the same amount of light, which may be why we have a similar sense of humour. — Jamie Sives

Felt, because it was structured poetry. There were — Stephen King

[I]t is useful at times to admit to yourself that you don't know your way and to be open to help from unexpected places. Doing that makes available to you inner and outer energies and allies that arise out of your own soulfulness and selflessness. [...] [G]etting caught up in the normal human tendencies of self-cherishing and arrogance, and ignoring the larger order of things, will ultimately lead to ans impasse in your life in which you are unable to go forward, unable to go back, and unable to turn around. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

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