Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s First Year

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke at the University of Chicago Law School earlier this week about her first year on the court. As the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, she said she’s received advice from other justices, is uncomfortable with celebrity, doesn’t like the role that public opinion plays in judicial decisions and criticized Chief Justice John Roberts for his “simplistic” approach to race.

It’s tremendous, if you ask me, that Sotomayor is blazing this trail as the first Latina, or Latino for that matter, appointed to the court.

When asked if she had any particular responsibility for representing race, gender or class on the court, she replied, “I do think I have a special role on the court, but not in the way that you think,” The New York Times reported. She’s glad to be a role model, she said, and there’s been a surge of Latino groups visiting the Supreme Court, and she makes it a priority to meet with them.

Sotomayor noted she disagreed with Roberts’ view of race, that to stop discrimination we have to stop identifying each other by race. “I don’t borrow Chief Justice Roberts’s description of what colorblindness is. Our society is too complex to use that kind of analysis,” The Times reported. For more from her speech, click here.