Sotomayor’s visit to UH ‘like seeing a rock star’
Supreme Court justice answers questions, tells law students to get involved in issues
The third-year law student couldn’t sleep the night before she stood steps from Sonia Sotomayor to ask the Supreme Court justice a question:
Does mass incarceration of people of color violate equal protection under the Voting Rights Act, given state laws that prohibit ex-felons from voting?
Sotomayor didn’t miss a beat.
“What do you think about it?” Sotomayor asked the student, Christina Beeler. “What are you doing about it?
“That case is going to come to the court some day because of you.
“You’re only one side of the argument. I haven’t heard the other side. I haven’t read what the judges have said . ... I’m not the one who makes the change. All of you are. You’re the ones who go out there and make the changes. They ultimately may get brought to me for decision
making.
“We’re only as smart as the lawyers who present issues to us.”
Sotomayor spoke to Beeler — who after the event called the exchange one of the best moments of her life — and a packed room of other University of Houston law students, faculty and administrators on Friday.
The wide-ranging discussion covered legal education, sexism and how Sotomayor responded to making her first C.
A welcome gift
The visit from Sotomayor was the first by a Supreme Court justice to a University of Houston Law Center event since Justice Sandra Day O’Connor visited in 2005, said Leonard Baynes, the center’s dean.
O’Connor received a cowboy hat upon her visit that year. On Friday, Sotomayor smiled as she accepted a Houston Astros cap and jersey from Michael Olivas, who directs UH’s higher education law and governance institute and interviewed Sotomayor, before students asked questions.
Law schools, Sotomayor said, need to focus their students more stringently on ethics early in their legal education.
She added that all lawyers should learn the basics of various fields of law, including taxation and estate law, to be able to help family, friends and clients with everyday legal challenges.
Several student questions for Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice and third woman on the Supreme Court, related to race and gender in law. More than 20 percent of entering UH law students last fall were Hispanic.
Carl Stewart, a first-year law student, asked Sotomayor how people of color should balance perceived inequities in the justice system.
“We don’t do anything alone,”
“I’m not the one who makes the change. All of you are. You’re the ones who go out there and make the changes.” Sonia Sotomayor, U.S. Supreme Court justice
she said, urging students to involve allies in their advocacy and build coalitions.
In response to a student question, Sotomayor said that judges don’t lose emotion when they put on their robes.
To avoid bias, Sotomayor said, she takes stock of any personal feelings so that they do not sway her decisions.
She recalled once seeing a lawyer’s hands shake during a trial and “bending over backward” to be caring to the man. Soon, she realized he reminded her of her grandfather, who had Parkinson’s disease.
“I don’t have a memory with him without the tremble,” she said.
Once she identified the memory and potential for bias, she said, it was easier to be more balanced.
“You have to consciously correct for them. If you don’t, you are being unconsciously unfair to the other side,” she said.
Visit ‘brings the case alive’
She urged one student, who said he was born abroad, to keep working on his writing and find peers or professors who can help him improve.
The first time she made a C, she said, she asked the professor for help. The professor circled each time she wrote “of,” noting she was using Spanish constructions of many phrases.
Sotomayor said the #MeToo movement is part of society’s “growth” and that she hoped it would be a “better world” for women entering law.
Early in the conversation, she stood up from her chair at the front of the lecture hall and began pacing the room, shaking hands and taking pictures with attendees. A young girl hugged Sotomayor as she passed.
Baynes, the UH Law Center’s dean, said Sotomayor’s background is inspirational to students and represents the “American dream.”
UH has worked to organize a visit from Sotomayor for three years, he said.
“For law students, seeing a Supreme Court justice is like seeing a rock star,” he said. “We read the cases, we learn about it, and then you get to see the judge who actually wrote the case. It really crystallizes it in a way you wouldn’t actually think it would. It brings the person alive. It brings the case alive if you see the person who actually has written those cases, those opinions.”