Members of the Winston-Salem legal community interviewed yesterday said they are impressed by Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee to replace Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court.
"From all I can see, she's very impressive," said Judge Victoria Roemer of Forsyth District Court.
Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice, if confirmed by the Senate. She is of Puerto Rican descent and was born and raised in public housing in the Bronx, the borough of New York just north of Manhattan.
She would also be the third woman ever to be on the Supreme Court, out of more than 110 past justices. Of nine justices, the current court has one female member -- Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- after the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor in 2006.
Roemer is one of five women serving on a District Court with 10 judges. To her, Sotomayor's gender doesn't matter.
"I just think the best person for the job is who needs to get it," she said.
Sotomayor attended Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude, and then Yale Law School. She has worked as a prosecutor and in private practice, and became a federal District Court judge in New York in 1992. She was elevated to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998.
Suzanne Reynolds, a law professor at Wake Forest University who ran unsucessfully for the N.C. Supreme Court last year, said that Sotomayor is an excellent choice who "shows respect for the three branches of government."
"This is long overdue," Reynolds said of a nomination of a woman to the court.
Ron Wright, a law professor at Wake Forest who studies criminal law, said that Sotomayor's background as a judge in U.S. District Court helps set her apart.
All the current Supreme Court justices have served on appeals courts, but Sotomayor has handled criminal trials and sentenced people under federal sentencing rules.
Trials and District Court rulings are common cases that are then heard by appeals courts to sort out legal questions raised by an appeal.
"There's a big difference between that and just reading the (court) papers a few months later" on an appeals court, Wright said.
Wright and Reynolds both said they expect some criticism of Sotomayor to focus on supposedly controversial comments she has made.
One example making the rounds yesterday was a comment she made at a panel at Duke Law School for students interested in working as clerks for federal judges.
Comparing District Court and appeals court, Sotomayor said that the appeals court "is where policy is made." Some critics have seized on the comment as a sign that Sotomayor sees herself as a policymaker.
"She was making descriptive comments," Wright said, "not a statement about how it should be."
And in her description, Sotomayor is right, Reynolds said.
"On the appellate bench, when issues come before the court, where the law is unclear, a decision does make policy," she said.
There will be more of those sorts of questions, just as there would be for any nominee.
"She walks into a world where there are highly motivated political machines ready to deal in high-volume terms," Wright said. "Everybody in the legal profession has said some things that can be grist for this mill."
■ Dan Galindo can be reached at 727-7377 or at dgalindo@wsjournal.com.
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