BERKELEY — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor held court on Thursday in front of an enthusiastic, capacity crowd at the 2,600-seat Zellerbach Auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus.

Sotomayor, the most frequent public speaker among the justices, was greeted as something of a judicial rock star on the left-leaning college campus where free tickets for the event were reportedly snapped up within five minutes after they were made available.