I’ll give you 5 reasons why you will love President Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee, Sonia Sotomayor:

1. Experience. After law school, Sotomayor spent five years as Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan, trying dozens of criminal cases. Her diverse range of experience – as an appellate judge, a trial judge, and commercial litigator – might allow her to recognize that courts participate in a dialogue with the political branches when it comes to defining constitutional rights, contrary to the popular notion that the Supreme Court has “the final word.” If her nomination is confirmed, Judge Sotomayor would bring more federal judicial experience to the Supreme Court than any justice in 100 years, and more overall judicial experience than anyone confirmed for the Court in the past 70 years.
2. Passsion. “I chose to be a lawyer and ultimately a judge because I find endless challenge in the complexities of the law,” she said. “For as long as I can remember, I have been inspired by the achievement of our founding fathers. They set forward principles that have endured for more than two centuries. . .
3. Humility. Sotomayor was raised in a Bronx housing project and attended some of the nation’s most prominent universities. It’s the kind of feel-good story that makes you appreciate the vast opportunities America has to offer everyone (even poor immigrants like me). Her inspirational life experiences have rendered her a hero as a woman, as a member of the Hispanic community, and as a tough and fair judge.
4. Relevance. Sotomayor is the antidote to the aging Supreme Court, a post-modern progressive justice for an age when even an African-American president is elected to the highest government office.
5. Sterling Education. Sotomayor graduated as valedictorian of her class at Blessed Sacrament and at Cardinal Spellman High School in New York. She won a scholarship to Princeton where she continued to excel, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She was a co-recipient of the M. Taylor Pyne Prize, the highest honor Princeton awards to an undergraduate. At Yale Law School, Judge Sotomayor served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal and as managing editor of the Yale Studies in World Public Order.

Word on the Street
So what are people saying about this nomination? Obama had a very large selection of qualified candidates – Cass Sunstein, Elena Kagan, and Diane Wood – so why did he choose Sonia Sotomayor?

“I doubt that Sotomayor can be stopped. She should be. She is a horrible pick. She is the antithesis of a judge, by her own admission and in her own words. She has been overturned 80% by the Supreme Court. She may as well be on the Ninth Circus Court of Appeals, given all the time she’s overturned. She has been reprimanded by a truly strong Hispanic judge, Jose Cabranes. She has been rebuked in writing by Cabranes for opinions that she wrote that had no bearing on the constitutional issues before her in the case that was being decided. “
- Rush Limbaugh

“She will be a liberal counterpart to Antonin Scalia–a fierce and eloquent advocate for liberal views. And she does not have the range of political experience of the politicians Obama considered–Janet Napolitano and Jennifer Granholm. For these reasons, the role she will, in fact, play on the Court is difficult to discern from her record.”
- Jeff Rosen

“The White House chose a judge distinguished from the other members of that list only by her race. Obama may say he wants to put someone on the Court with a rags-to-riches background, but locking in the political support of Hispanics must sit higher in his priorities.”
- John Yoo

Sources:
The Atlantic
The American
Politico