My Beloved World

by Sonia Sotomayor

  They became the center of my extracurricular life, what time for it we could spare. With Rudy, I co-chaired LANA, Yale’s Latino, Asian, and Native American student association. The focus was on recruitment and other issues like those I’d dealt with at Princeton. It was sometimes surprising how the support of their own kind, which had been so essential to my survival at Princeton and which in a smaller way I’d re-created among my law school friends, was not such a priority among some of the minority students at Yale. Here I found more Latinos and members of other groups who seemed determined to assimilate as quickly and thoroughly as possible, bearing any attendant challenges and psychic costs in private. I could understand the impulse, but it was never a choice I could have made myself.

  Drew got me into more mainstream activity at the Graduate and Professional Student Center, better known as the GPSC—or “Gypsy.” Essentially, it was a bar for grad students—the cheapest drinks in New Haven—and as vice president of operations, he hired me to work the door, taking tickets and checking IDs. I would have preferred to work behind the bar, which paid better, but I was a more than adequate bouncer. Nobody could talk their way past me, and I ejected many a townie trying to climb in through the window to avoid the cover charge. My instincts only failed me once: A group of girls wanted to have a look around inside before paying the cover, to see if they really wanted to stay. Not having been born yesterday, I told them nice try and was about to send them on their way, when Drew appeared. Getting worked up when he caught wind of the situation, he wound up apologizing to the ladies and insisting I let them in for free. The bar, he told me, was full of desperate guys with no one to dance with—a very bad situation for liquor sales.

  “It’s not right, Drew, the guys are paying, why should the women get in free? Can’t you see that’s sex discrimination?”

  “Not everything is a civil rights case, Sonia!” he yelled. “I’ve got a band to pay and nobody’s drinking.” We argued some more, until finally he solved the problem by promoting me to bartender and putting someone else on the door.

  With such a colorful crew, alliances could shift and tensions flare from time to time, but the gravitational pull of adoptive family always held. I invited my compadres to Co-op City to meet my mother and then for many a holiday dinner. They felt comfortable enough to critique Mami’s taste in art. The Three Graces that hung in the living room, a metal bas-relief on velvet, they dubbed “a tit and three asses.” But behind their bravado I could sense that they were slightly in awe of my mother’s steadiness and her unassuming concern for so many people around her; it was something they in their wanderings had missed out on and would sometimes struggle to find.

  IT WAS at Yale that I met the first person I can describe as a true mentor. I had long known the good of seeking out the guidance of teachers, from Miss Katz to Nancy Weiss and Peter Winn at Princeton. And I had an even older understanding of how much friends and classmates could teach me. But I had not yet discovered the benefit of sustained dialogue with someone who epitomized the kind of achievement I aspired to, and much beyond that. It was not the comfort of handholding; rather, it was a style of learning by means of engaging a living example. Some of us are natural autodidacts; others learn best by visual representation; others still by auditory cues. For me the most agreeable and effective instruction has come from observing the nuances and complexity of live action, the complete package of knowledge, experience, and judgment that is another human being. Whenever I make a new friend, my mind goes naturally to the question, what can I learn from this person? There are very few people in the world whom you can’t learn something from, but even rarer are those souls who can reveal whole worlds to you if you observe them carefully.

  I first met José Cabranes through a Princeton friend who’d worked with me in Acción Puertorriqueña. Charlie Hey-Maestre had been a year behind me, and when I was in my first year at Yale, he was writing his senior thesis, which dealt with issues around U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans. He had come to Yale to consult José Cabranes, who was an expert on the topic. I had offered Charlie our couch for the night, and we stayed up late talking. “So who is this Cabranes guy?” I asked. Charlie explained: José Cabranes had served as special counsel to the governor of Puerto Rico and head of the commonwealth’s Washington office, and he was now Yale’s general counsel, the first ever named to that position. Earlier, he had been a founder of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and a professor at Rutgers. He was a trailblazer and a hero to many for his work promoting civil rights for Hispanics.

  Charlie insisted that I come along to the lunch meeting he had arranged. José Cabranes was gracious, warm, and brilliant. He spent the first half hour addressing Charlie’s questions and then gradually drew me into the conversation. We talked about the relationship between the mainland and the island and how it affected Puerto Ricans’ view of the world, our self-image, and the scope of our future. I was surprised at the way he used the term “colonial” so neutrally, as if it were a statement of fact rather than a moral condemnation, a description of present economic and political circumstances rather than a judgment on history. Our discussion turned on the tensions inherent in a circumscribed statutory citizenship, a status with more limited rights than were enjoyed by citizens on the mainland, and the consequences of living under those limitations for the better part of a century and perhaps indefinitely.

  It had been three hours when José looked at his watch and said he needed to get back to work. Charlie and I thanked him and said our good-byes. As we were about to leave, José turned to me and said, “What are you doing this summer? Come work for me.” I had just arrived at Yale and certainly hadn’t thought that far ahead. But I didn’t hesitate a moment before accepting, nor did I wait for summer before starting work for him.

  My job involved research for the book he was writing on the legislative history of U.S. citizenship for Puerto Ricans, as well as minor assistance with the day-to-day legal work of the university. But what I learned came from having a front-row seat, observing his conduct of meetings or simply the traffic of people, issues, and ideas through his office. In the hothouse of very bright people that Yale was, he was one of the brightest, with an intimate knowledge of the law, a passion for history, and the skill to engage with warmth and depth whomever he encountered.

  Until I met José Cabranes, I could not have imagined him. I had glimpsed Congressmen Herman Badillo and Bobby Garcia at work when I interned on Badillo’s mayoral campaign. But they were dealing with their constituents, people like those I knew. José maintained similar community relations in his pro bono work as the very model of a citizen-lawyer, but he could maneuver with equal skill and self-assurance, a kind of courtly grace, in the most rarefied corridors of power. And yet he remained infinitely generous with his knowledge, time, and influence, especially with young people. He would take Felix under his wing, too, and offer Drew guidance on the confusing thickets of Indian tribal law, a different manifestation of the American empire. We tried mightily to impress him. If he doubted some of the ideas we presented to him, like so many dead mice offered up by eager kittens, he always tempered his skepticism with good humor.

  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.” By the time I got to Yale, I had met a few successful lawyers, usually in their role as professors. José, the first I had the chance to observe up close, not only transcended the academic role but also managed to uphold his identity as a Puerto Rican, serving vigorously in both worlds.

  I knew better than to try to imitate José.
I had enough self-awareness to understand that the best I could do was derive what lessons I could from his success as they might relate to my own capacities. I still consider his advice carefully—indeed, I’ve sought it at every crossroads in my career—though I’m more likely to translate it into my own terms than to take it up directly. José has often spoken of what an unusual protégée I’ve been: how I often confer with him, only then to do exactly as I please. He’s only half joking.

  IN THE ABSENCE of grades and class rank, the only clear mark of standing at Yale Law School is to get on The Yale Law Journal. The most straightforward way to do that is to write a piece and have it accepted for publication. It’s called a “note,” but it’s really a very thorough paper.

  “Bring me a proposal,” said Bill Eskridge, who was the note and topics editor. Bill has since returned to Yale as a respected professor specializing in statutory interpretation, though in my memory his lanky form, forever in plaid shirt and jeans, is of a piece with the journal’s stifling, dust-caked offices at the top of the Sterling building. He laid out the criteria: the note had to be original, significant, and logically cogent. I had to find some unresolved legal problem—one tightly focused but of real consequence—and then solve it. It sounds straightforward until you consider that countless students have ascended this temple to propose a topic and been rebuffed.

  At Princeton, I had pondered the question of Puerto Rican citizenship historically, politically, and economically, but in doing research for José Cabranes’s book, I had started to see it in legal terms, a different lens and perhaps a more powerful one for some purposes. But if you look too closely at what the islanders had been granted as against what other U.S. citizens enjoy by birth or naturalization, issues emerge that no one wants to grapple with. Could, for instance, the U.S. citizenship of Puerto Ricans living on the mainland be revoked were they to return to the island in the case of independence? Such unresolved questions constitute the legal morass underlying decades of political stalemate and still sway small but decisive percentages of the commonwealth’s electorate. If I could find one legal knot to untangle, it might avail not only a good topic for a note but something useful for Puerto Rico.

  The island couldn’t afford statehood or independence, many people reasoned at the time. But having studied seabed rights, treaties, and offshore territorial sovereignty in Admiralty class, I could see a wealth of potential for the island underwater. Might the unexploited mineral and oil resources be tapped to fund development? After all, the island’s poverty had always been ascribed to the dearth of natural resources. Control of those neglected rights would be vital to local prosperity, whatever the island’s future, be it commonwealth, statehood, or independence. Many have since argued, however, that the economic impact of the seabed rights would be negligible, and in fact thirty years later little of their promise has been realized.

  I was in the ballpark. Now I had only to narrow the topic to a single legal question I could answer. I focused on statehood for purposes of the note because that was where precedent was clearest. I combed the old case law cases relating to the so-called equal footing doctrine, which gives new states joining the Union the same constitutional rights enjoyed by existing states, even while ceding to the federal government other powers enumerated in the Constitution. There were among the precedents a variety of obstacles, strange particulars of what some states had been permitted or denied. In the end, I couldn’t establish affirmatively that Puerto Rico was entitled to its seabed rights in all circumstances, but I could prove that retaining them would not violate the doctrine of equal footing in the event of statehood. It was one small step, a tiny clearing in the jungle that has grown around the status question, but I thought it unassailable.

  Bill Eskridge liked the idea. Fortunately, the other members of the journal did too, despite their preference that notes address themselves to current case law. After seemingly endless rounds of drafts and revision, “Statehood and the Equal Footing Doctrine: The Case for Puerto Rican Seabed Rights” was published.

  ONE DAY, we were having a perfectly civil exchange when out of the blue Rudy interrupted me: “You know what I love about you, Sonia? You argue just like a guy.” Kevin, stretched out on the couch, snorted a gulpful of his soda, choking down a laugh.

  “What is that supposed to mean, Rudy?”

  Suddenly I was seething, and they knew it. Felix asserted his calming influence: “It’s a good thing, Sonia, he means it as a compliment.” I had heard compliments like that before.

  Rudy forged on, explaining: I didn’t hedge every statement with disclaimers, apologies, and self-doubts. He did his impression of how women raised their hands in class. “ ‘Excuse me, Professor, I’m sorry, this might not be important, but you may want to consider the possibility …’ Not you, Sonia,” he said. “When you ask to be called on, you just state your case plain and defy anyone to prove you wrong.”

  Rudy was right in that sense: I have always argued like a man, more noticeably in the context of those days, when an apologetic and tentative manner of speech was the norm among women. I don’t know where I learned this style, but it has served me well, especially in the years when most of the people I was arguing with were men.

  Where Rudy was wrong, however, was in suggesting that I had ever volunteered to speak in class. Having suffered the repetitive trauma of getting grilled, I was well into my third year before I’d ever raised my hand. But when I did, Rudy would be there to see it. It happened in Clark’s class on Trusts and Estates; he was teaching the common-law rule against perpetuities, which limits how far into the future a will can control a line of inheritance. Professor Clark was charting a hypothetical family tree on the blackboard, a sequence of births and deaths, when it occurred to me that the fate of this inheritance was essentially a math problem. Moreover, I could see a mistake in his calculation. I raised my hand, he called on me, and I pointed out the error. He turned and stared at the blackboard for several very long, silent minutes. Finally, he turned around. “She’s absolutely right,” he said. “I’ve made a mistake.” He explained to the class what I’d caught and put up another example, only to make a similar mistake. When I raised my hand this time, he paused more briefly before turning around and saying, “Why don’t you come up and teach this part?”

  I got a slap on the back from Rudy after class. But an even bigger confidence breakthrough was shortly to come, with my participation in the mock trials for the Barristers’ Union competition. Perhaps the courtroom playacting somehow liberated my inner Perry Mason. Or maybe Forensics Club experience had come to the rescue again, or a buried memory of Abuelita mesmerizing her audience. Somehow or other, in this setting I felt for the first time I could actually be a lawyer.

  As it happened, in one trial, Drew was my client, the defendant in a he-said/she-said rape case. We rehearsed the argument in great detail, but in the moment when I stood before the jury, people recruited from the community through an ad in the local paper, the analytic preparation receded into the background, and some other instinct came forward. I found my eyes automatically scanning their faces, trying to read them: Are they following me? Do I need to push harder or to pull back? There was a sweet spot where I was able to meet them halfway. Most of them, anyway.

  In the jury box, one middle-aged man kept shaking his head ever so slightly and pursing his lips, again and again. But the subtle signals of antipathy didn’t track my remarks; they were out of sync, as if he were responding to some other stimulus rather than what I was saying. We were encouraged to approach the jury members afterward for feedback on our performance. As people were milling around at the end of the session, I approached him and said, “I have a feeling I rubbed you the wrong way. Can you tell me why?”

  He seemed startled, then shook his head. “It’s nothing you did.”

  I told him that I was trying to learn. That was the purpose of the exercise. Whether it was something I was doing or not doing, I wished he would let me know so that I
could adjust my approach in the future.

  He shut down. “It’s my own thing,” he said. “I can’t help you.” But I continued to press him politely. Finally, he blurted it out. “Look, nothing personal. I just don’t like brassy Jewish women.” That took me by surprise. I froze as my mind raced through the things I could possibly say to this man, when the right response occurred to me.

  I looked at him. “You’re right,” I said. “I can’t do anything about that.” And I walked away.

  MY SECOND SUMMER at Yale, I landed a job as a summer associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, one of the very top law firms in Manhattan. I was working under men known as giants in litigation, and I was given a variety of assignments, the most challenging of which was a contribution to a brief being prepared for a huge antitrust case—an auspicious opportunity if ever there was one. But when I sat down to write, my arguments seemed continually wide of the mark. True, antitrust was not an area of the law I’d studied, and I had no background in business to speak of. But considering the difficulty of proving a violation of the Sherman Act, I couldn’t figure out why I was failing to articulate a persuasive argument on the client’s behalf, despite racking my brains on the long daily commute between New Haven and New York. I finally handed in my effort to a young associate one notch up the totem pole. Only when I saw what he eventually wrote himself and passed up to the next level did I fully realize how poor a job I had done. I obviously wasn’t thinking like a lawyer yet. If this was what it meant to work in a prestigious law firm, I clearly was not ready.