As hundreds of thousands venture by plane, bus, and foot to witness President Barack Obama be sworn in for a second term in office, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor will be making history with what’s she’s calling “a tribute to the Latino community,” EFE reports.
Sotomayor will be the first Hispanic judge to administer an oath at an inaugural ceremony when she swears in Vice President Joe Biden on Sunday in a private ceremony and once again on Monday in front of scores of Americans.
"It is a tribute to the Latino community, to how important we have grown to be in the U.S. that a vice president of the United States would think it appropriate to ask the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court to swear him in," Sotomayor told the Spanish news agency.
The Justice, who became the first Hispanic to serve on the Supreme Court in August 2009, confessed that as a young girl growing up in a low-income area of the Bronx she would’ve thought both of these achievements improbable.
"We've come to such a great point that a girl of Puerto Rican parents can stand before the country and the world administering the oath to the vice president," Sotomayor told EFE while promoting her new memoir "My Beloved World.”
During a recent interview with CBS’s Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes,” the Justice credits her success to both her “streak of stubbornness” and affirmative action.
"The affirmative action of today is very different than it was when I was going to school," she told Pelley. "And each school does it in a different way. I can't pass judgment on whether there's a role for it or not without it being seen as I'm making a comment on an existing case [Fisher v. University of Texas]. But I do know that, for me, it was a door opener that changed the course of my life."
Before You Go
