Obama’s Nominee: The Supremes’ First Hispanic Woman

President Obama is expected to announce that he will fill retiring Justice David Souter’s seat on the high court with Sonia Sotomayor. She would be the first Hispanic member of the Supreme Court. Sotomayor is a self-described “Newyorkican” who grew up in housing projects in the Bronx after her parents moved to New York from Puerto Rico. She attended Princeton University and Yale Law School before becoming a prosecutor and a federal judge. She also has a bipartisan background, having been appointed to the bench by George H.W. Bush and then nominated to the appeals court by Bill Clinton. And did we mention that she helped end the baseball strike? For more about the potential Justice we turn to Slate Magazine’s Senior Legal Correspondent Dahlia Lithwick.