In Houston Jan. 22 at a reading of her new memoir, “My Beloved World,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she hopes her book will inspire people who face difficulties in life. The court’s first Hispanic justice grew up in a housing project, where she lived with her younger brother and her mother, a nurse. She was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes at the age of 7, and she started the book with a chapter about learning at that age how to give herself insulin shots. She said she wanted people who read the memoir to think, “Yes, she’s an ordinary person like me, and if that person can do it, so can I.” Eschewing the podium, Sotomayor walked through the crowd. She said she learned a lot about her family while researching the book, including details of the love story between her mother and her father, who suffered from alcoholism and died when Sotomayor was 9 years old. She urged people to take the time to talk to their relatives about family history. “Don’t wait until they are not here any longer,” she said. On this, her first visit to Texas, she read her favorite passage from the book to the crowd at The Wortham Center: “When a young person, even a gifted one, grows up without proximate living examples of what she may aspire to become — whether lawyer, scientist, artist, or leader in any realm — her goal remains abstract. Such models as appear in books or on the news, however, inspiring or revered, are ultimately too remote to be real, let alone influential. But a role model in the flesh provides more than an inspiration; his or her very existence is confirmation of possibilities one may have every reason to doubt, saying, ‘Yes, someone like me can do this.’ ” After Sotomayor’s nearly hour-long discussion of the book, she fielded some questions about the Supreme Court from Randall Morton, president of The Progressive Forum, a Houston speakers’ organization. Sotomayor told the crowd they wouldn’t want her job. “ We spend most of our day reading. We then research, then we write, and then we edit,” she says, noting that the oral arguments are a microcosm of the work that goes into an opinion. While the justices disagree on legal issues, she says they do get along. “In person, we treat each other with respect and love,” she says. A graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, she joined the court in 2009. Ticketholders at the event received a copy of “My Beloved World” and Sotomayor told the crowd she would stay and sign all books.
Punch in, Judges
One of the great aspects of being an elected judge in Texas is that there are no time clocks involved in the job; Texas jurists work as much or as little as they need to. And if voters don’t like how much they work, there’s always an election in four or six years to deal with that problem. But a bill filed Jan. 11 in the Texas Legislature may change all that, by requiring judges to show up in the courthouses in which they work. H.B. 470 would amend the Texas Government Code to require that “elected officers” — including judges who sit on the Texas Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals, intermediate appellate courts and district courts — to “be physically present on a regular basis at a location at which official business of the jurisdiction served by the officer is ordinarily conducted.” The bill’s sponsor, Rep. James White, R-Woodville, says he didn’t especially have judges in mind when he wrote the bill. Rather, he wanted to solve a problem that popped up regarding an elected official who lost a race and then allegedly decided to show up “sparingly.” “We want to make sure that the people are getting what they paid for,” White says of the intentions behind the bill. As for how to enforce this proposed law, White says “That’s something we’re working through. . . . [W]e don’t want this to become a free-for-all to get people out of office and bypass the electoral process.” In the meantime, may we suggest a time clock?
