Sotomayor wanted to be a judge since age 10

updated 5:21 p.m. ET May 26, 2009

NEW YORK - Sonia Sotomayor's path to the pinnacle of the legal profession began in the 1960s at a Bronx housing project just a couple blocks from Yankee Stadium, where she and her family dealt with one struggle after another.

She suffered juvenile diabetes that forced her to start insulin injections at age 8. Her father died the next year, leaving her to be raised by her mother — a nurse at a methadone clinic who always kept a pot of rice and beans on the stove. The parents had immigrated from Puerto Rico.

Sotomayor immersed herself in Nancy Drew books and spent hours watching Perry Mason on television, and knew she wanted to be a judge by the age of 10 after being inspired by a Perry Mason episode that ended with the camera settling on the robed sage.

"I realized that the judge was the most important player in that room," Sotomayor said in a 1998 interview with The Associated Press.

Scrutiny ahead
Now, Sotomayor is one of the most important players in the nation after being nominated for a Supreme Court seat by President Barack Obama. It is the crowning accomplishment in a career that included a long list of achievements: Yale Law School; a stint as a prosecutor and at a Manhattan law firm; a key ruling in 1995 that brought Major League Baseball back to the nation after a strike; and most recently a job as a federal appeals judge.

Susan Walsh / AP Celina Sotomayor, mother of the High Court nominee, wipes her eye during the announcement Tuesday.

The Manhattan-born Sotomayor's humble upbringing has shaped her personality — vibrant and colorful, and so different from the Bronx projects where she grew up in a working-class existence in a home with a drab yellow kitchen.

She is a food-loving baseball buff as likely to eat a hot dog at a street corner stand as she is to sit down for a lengthy meal at a swanky Manhattan restaurant.

Her work and everything else in her life are sure to face close scrutiny in the months ahead in a process Sotomayor is all too familiar with. Her nomination to the appeals court was delayed 15 months, reportedly because of concerns by Republicans that she might someday be considered for the Supreme Court.

Video   Obama makes history with Supreme Court pick May 26: President Barack Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who, if confirmed, will become the first Hispanic and the third woman to sit on the Supreme Court. NBC's Savannah Guthrie reports. Nightly News

"I don't think anybody looked at me as a woman or as a Hispanic and said, `We're not going to appoint her because of those characteristics.' Clearly that's not what occurred," she recalled in the 1998 interview.

"But I do believe there are gender and ethnic stereotypes that propel people to assumptions about what they expected me to be," she continued. "I obviously felt that any balanced view of my work would not support some of the allegations being made."

The judge who saved baseball
Her baseball ruling in 1995 was among the most important moments of her career. Because of her position on the bench in New York, she was put in the position to essentially decide the future of the sport she so loved.

Acknowledging the pivotal moment, Sotomayor described how it is "when you see an outfielder backpedaling and jumping up to the wall and time stops for an instant as he jumps up and you finally figure out whether it's a home run, a double or a single off the wall or an out."

Then she scolded baseball owners for unfair labor practices and urged lawyers for striking players and the owners to salvage the 1995 season, reach a new labor agreement and change their attitudes.

As she showed with her March 1995 baseball ruling, the 54-year-old Sotomayor embraces the dramatic moment as well as any of the roughly 80 judges in the lower Manhattan courthouse that has been her home since her appointment to the bench in 1992 by President Bush.

Key rulings
As a district judge, she advanced First Amendment religious claims by tossing out a state prison rule banning members of a religious sect from wearing colored beads to ward off evil spirits, and by rejecting a suburban law preventing the display of a 9-foot-high menorah in a park.

In 1995, she released the suicide note of former White House aide Vincent Foster, acting on litigation brought by the Wall Street Journal under the Freedom of Information Act.

Sotomayor, who has a brother who became a doctor, presided over a civil trial in 1996 in which the family of a lawyer who died from AIDS sued the makers of the movie, "Philadelphia," contending that Hollywood stole their story. The case was settled but not before the movie with its dramatic courtroom showdowns was aired in court in its entirety, prompting Sotomayor to caution: "I don't expect melodrama here. I don't want anybody aspiring to what they see on the screen."

A year later, she ruled in favor of the creators of the "Seinfeld" show in a claim that a trivia book infringed on their television program's copyright.

MORE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE

The White House Section Front

Dinner crashers met Obama, White House says   Life isn’t all glamor for Obama crashers Ho-ho-ho! White House Christmas tree arrives Newsweek: How Obama is changing China Lawyer: White House ‘cleared’ party crashers Lobbyists pushed off advisory panels Old fridge? ‘Cash for Appliances’ looms Obama: Too many fear end of American dream Camera crew filmed White House crashers U.S. sets climate target ahead of summit The White House Section Front   Add The White House headlines to your news reader: