Sonia Sotomayor: A Justice Like No Other

In Sonia Sotomayor, Obama makes a historic choice for the court. What her extraordinary life says about the kind of Justice she would be

By Richard Lacayo Thursday, May 28, 2009

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Brooks Kraft / Corbis for Time
The President with Sotomayor, the first Hispanic female to be nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Barack Obama said he wanted: a Supreme Court nominee with a "common touch." With Sonia Sotomayor, he got somebody with a common touch and an uncommon story. Nobody expects you to be chosen someday for the Supreme Court when your father was a welder with a third-grade education. Nobody expects you to make it to Princeton when you come from a public-housing project.

But barring a big surprise, most people expect Sotomayor to be on the court when it opens its next term in October. The Democrats already have 59 votes in the...

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