My Beloved World

Seven months into her tenure in the DA’s office, Morgenthau recommends Sotomayor to recruiters seeking lawyers to work pro bono for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund (PRLDEF), eventually renamed Latino Justice. Though stretched thin, she does not want to let down the Boss.

Puerto Rican lawyers founded the organization in 1972 “to use their legal skills to challenge systemic discrimination against the Hispanic community” (233). Sotomayor says their victories with voting rights and against discriminatory hiring practices “would open the door for hundreds or thousands of individuals” and impact people across the country (234). She is deeply moved and proud that they are “of [her] community” and also values that they benefit the larger community (234). She becomes the group’s youngest board member, making friends with people who go on to high-powered careers while “upholding a lifelong dedication to public service” (235). The women, who she describes as leaders in their fields and selfless public servants, inspire her in particular.

Sotomayor works on the litigation committee (hiring staff lawyers and determining what types of cases they will take on) and the education committee (arranging internships, mentoring, and developing LSAT preparation materials to encourage more Latinos to attend law school). The work teaches her how to navigate “politics”: how to balance competing interests within a single organization. Her experience also teaches her that the needs of individuals must be balanced with the institution’s needs: neglecting the institution’s “health and concerns” ultimately negatively impacts everyone associated with it (236).

PRLDEF is her first real pro bono experience and the “honorable role of a ‘citizen lawyer’” (236). She serves there for twelve years, until she becomes a judge, and finds using her education “to help others so satisfying” that she joins with other groups as well, including a New York mortgage agency that helps working-class families afford mortgages (237).

Sotomayor is especially eager to tackle economic development and education issues, which are crucial to the community in which she was raised. Through her work, she comes to believe that “no group is an island” (237). Doing good means recognizing “a larger civic context” (237). She begins to branch out with her work, joining New York City’s Campaign Finance Board (CFB), a relatively new organization created after 1980s campaign-funding scandals rocked the city. Finding “a structural solution” for a long-running problem appeals to her, as does finding solutions through compromise and rising above “partisanship” (238).

CFB provides her “introduction to the city and state political scenes” (238). Though she believes her ideals transcend politics, Sotomayor acknowledges that she could not have ascended “to the federal bench” outside of political channels (238). Being known among influential people would become central to her career advancement. Networking, which she says idealistic people can look down on, is the only way to succeed because “you have to be known to people” (239). She notes this can work both ways. During her Supreme Court nomination, her involvement with PRLDEF, called a“radical organization,” was questioned. She feels saddened that the institution’s work was “so grossly distorted during the Senate hearings” and is “eternally grateful” to the staff and board who rebutted the charges and rallied community support on her behalf (239).

In the summer of 1981, Sotomayor’s marriage to Kevin ends. She acknowledges that her “all-consuming” work at the DA’s Office was a factor. Kevin, too, is creating a new life at Princeton, of which Sotomayor has “no part” (240). On a Cape Cod vacation, Kevin admits “he no longer [feels] connected” to his wife, though they do not usually talk about their feelings for each other (240). The morning after they return home, Sotomayor finally receives her license with her married name. She jokes to Kevin that it will probably take another five years for them to change it back. He responds, “I’m sure they do it all the time,” a sign to Sotomayor that their marriage is over (240).

After he leaves for work the next day, she phones her mother. Normally, Sotomayor does not discuss her relationship with friends or family, believing “relationships are private” (241). Others may remember a negative story long after “the speaker had forgiven the offense” (241). However, now that her and Kevin’s problems are serious, she calls her mother and asks to come home. Sotomayor and Kevin amicably resolve their assets. She agrees to take on the credit card debt and their car, but he has to teach her to drive stick shift, adding unnecessary stress to an otherwise rancor-free breakup.

Sotomayor is “overwhelmed and sad” but determined to move that weekend. Her friend Marguerite and her husband come down to help move her back to Co-op City. Her brother Junior has graduated medical school and is away doing his residency, leaving the house feeling empty, but Celina prepares a comforting welcome dinner. It is a relief to be home.

After she moves out, she and Kevin begin to talk “in earnest” and date “intermittently for a year or so” in an “unspoken effort to rekindle a spark” that “never took,” though it helps them understand “what had gone wrong” (243). One night, he admits that he has always felt proud of her but knows that he cannot “catch up with” her (243). She appreciates his generosity in acknowledging this instead of lashing out because of a wounded ego. He also says he wants to be needed, and though he knows Sotomayor loves him, she does not need him. She acknowledges this is true but would not have thought of it as a problem. She wonders, in retrospect, if she looked at it “too rationally” (244). Since childhood, when she perceived adults as unreliable, she has “cultivated an existential independence,” feeling it essential for her survival (244). Now, it is “alienating” her from her husband (244).

She wonders if having more relationships before getting married would have helped her understand “what it takes to make one last” (244). At the same time, she fears her “self-reliance” would be hard “for any man to take” (244). She feels secure and comfortable being single, but “a happy relationship remains an alluring alternative” (244). She is optimistic about having one in the future.

In the spring, Kevin follows his thesis advisor to Chicago. There is no question of Sotomayor following him, as her work in the DAs office matters to her “at least as much as his research” matters to him (245). His mother, Jean, is “heartbroken” by the breakup (245). Despite her initial prejudice, they had developed a real friendship over the years. Though Sotomayor is sad, she is unsentimental and reverts to her maiden name.

Sotomayor’s friends are “incredulous and sometimes even a little frightened” by her ability to compartmentalize (246). She focuses intensely while working, but when she stops, the divorce hits her. Her male friends from the DA’s office keep her busy with brunches, movies, and parties. Her friend Nancy provides “talk therapy” and “shopping therapy,” challenging Sotomayor’s “ingrained, relentlessly negative self-image” (246). Nancy convinces her to sign up for a Fire Island summer house share. It goes so well that the strangers become friends and continue the house share for several years. Sotomayor also begins dating and moves to an apartment in Dawn’s Italian Brooklyn neighborhood. She enjoys decorating and developing her “personal sense of style,” and Marguerite helps her learn how to handle her finances (246).

In Brooklyn, Sotomayor and Dawn develop a routine of eating a late dinner together and discussing “that day in the life of New York’s criminal justice system” (250). They share similar backgrounds, both being daughters of first-generation immigrants and having had to develop self-reliance at a young age. Like Celina, Sotomayor extends her family’s “boundaries” by adding members through community and marriage—family by blood and by choice. She loves children and has many godchildren as well as a close bond with Kiley, the daughter of Junior and his wife, Tracy.

Despite her love for children, having her own “seemed inarguably” to “be tempting fate” (254). Though Type 1 diabetics do have children, the chance of complications is “sobering” (254). Adoption is an attractive option. Junior and Tracy adopt twin boys when Kiley is eight, but Sotomayor is concerned about her longevity. She specifies that she sacrificed motherhood but not necessarily to her career. While she sometimes feels “a tug of regret,” she never feels alone. Sotomayor also notes that any parents, male or female, who parent “wholeheartedly” may experience “a life of perpetual internal compromise” (254). She has always made a point of making her chambers welcoming to mothers. Still, she believes the idea of “having it all” without having to “sacrifice to either” is “a myth we would do well to abandon,” along with “the pernicious notion that a woman who chooses one or the other is somehow deficient” (255).

During Sotomayor’s tenure at the DA’s Office, women had only just begun to enter the legal profession in large numbers. Few served as prosecutors or defense counsel, and while they earned equal pay, they gained fewer promotions and experienced “casual sexism” (255). Nancy had been called “honey” by a judge, who persisted even after she asked him to stop. Sotomayor recalls hearing “a court security officer call a woman judge ‘sweetie’ in her own courtroom” (255). She does not respond in instances like this, which Nancy and Dawn fault. They want Sotomayor to be more vocal, but she does not see an “overarching conspiracy against women” (256). She attributes “unequal treatment” to a case of “old habits dying hard” (256). At the same time, she acknowledges the environment was “decidedly and often inhospitably male” (256). Her bureau chiefs happen to be “unusually enlightened,” but others could be “disdainful” of women lawyers. Sotomayor holds her own with her male colleagues and preserves her “sense of humor in the face of their macho antics,” but she wonders if she would have done so if she were also a mother (257).

The end of her marriage inspires Sotomayor to reflect on how her job is changing her. She has not lost her “essential optimism” and “abiding faith in human nature,” but seeing humanity at its worse has begun to harden her. She loves her work and believes in its value, but she wonders if there might be other “equally worthy jobs” (258). The frustration of dealing with repeat offenders makes her consider the possibility that she could be “working to improve the system rather than simply enforcing it on the front lines” (259). Her “old dream of becoming a judge” resurfaces, and she aims for the federal bench, believing that is where she could positively impact the most lives through “landmark rulings” (259). Knowing she will need knowledge in and experience of civil law, she sets her sights on a job in that field.

Not wanting to lose her, Morgenthau assigns her a police-brutality case brought by a Harlem church leader. The relationship between police and the black community is “already strained,” and the minister’s well-known civil-rights lawyer expresses the black community’s anger at police and mistrust of the prosecutor (260). The minister refuses to cooperate with the investigation. Sotomayor assures them she will investigate with an open mind. She is not naive about the reality of abuse, whether because of personal emotional problems or frustration with the “massive crime wave” and “woefully underfunded response” that “could change people” who began their jobs “with the best intentions” (261). She feels strongly, however, that policing becomes “infinitely harder” if a community loses faith in law enforcement (261). She scours the streets for three months, talking with community members and looking for witnesses. In the end, no one comes forward, but her “genuine effort” avoids “explosive headlines” (262).

Morgenthau’s next big case for Sotomayor is the complex murder case against Richard Maddicks, called the “Tarzan Murderer” because he swings into apartments from a window. As she crafts pretrial motions, she realizes she is beginning to think “like a lawyer” (264). She works with the lead prosecutor sifting through mountains of records to identify “the crucial details” and prepare charts, maps, and diagrams to present evidence visually so the jury does not become overwhelmed. They also spend time in the Harlem neighborhood where the crime spree occurred so they can internalize it and bring it to life for the jury. In court, Sotomayor hopes to see “even a glimmer of empathy or regret” from Maddicks, but he betrays no hint of feeling. Sotomayor calls him her “first real-life encounter with a human being beyond salvage” (266). He is sentenced to 67 1/2 years in prison. After the trial, the partner of one of the victims approaches Sotomayor and tells her, “there is something special about you. You’ve been blessed” (267). The woman’s words reiterate Sotomayor’s commitment to moving forward in her work.

The next big case Morgenthau sends her involves child pornography. She secures convictions on all eighty-six charges against her two defendants. Following her success, Morgenthau wants to promote her to head of the Juvenile Office, but she turns him down for “self-preservation,” feeling she “couldn’t witness that much sorrow and depravity without drowning in it” (273). She decides it is time to move on.

Her cousin Nelson has reentered her life after eight years. He has joined the military and cleaned up. Though he has his ups and downs, they stay connected. He is married and has a baby on the way when he discovers he has AIDS, “one of the very first cases linked to needle use” (374). During his final weeks, the two talk for hours as they had as children. Sotomayor tells him how much “his brilliance and his limitless curiosity” had “dazzled” her as a child (274). He tells her he has “always been in awe of” her determination and strong will, calling it “a different kind of intelligence” (274). In July 1983, at the Fire Island house, she wakes suddenly from a deep sleep at 4:30 a.m. She goes out to watch the sunrise and feels Nelson’s presence: “He’s come to say good-bye” (275). When she walks back to the house, the phone is ringing. Nelson’s father, Benny, is calling with the news that Nelson has died. He was not yet thirty years old. 

Sotomayor reflects on why she has endured and thrived while Nelson—who Sotomayor sayswas “smarter” and “had the father” she wished for—became “consumed by the same dangers that had surrounded” her (276). She finds “reason” to be a “defense against the pain” and acknowledges her strong will—“discipline, determination, perseverance” (276). She wishes she could bottle if for every American child. Her competitive spirit comes from deep inside her, but she believes what most drives her is her desire to help others, and she has been aware of it “for as long as [she] can remember” (276).

Her two closest examples of “selfless love” have been Abuelita and Celina. In Abuelita, Sotomayor sees a protector, the woman who was essential to her survival and who inspired Sotomayor to manage her diabetes, achieve at school, and “imagine the most improbable possibilities” for her life (277). She notes that her good fortune is a “blessing” that makes her life “not entirely my own” (277). She does not consider herself free to “squander” the gift she has been given (277). She becomes determined to share her gift, and to dedicate it to the service of others. That is why, as a child, she wanted to become a lawyer: she saw it as an opportunity to serve others. Law is a positive force that structures relationships and promotes the welfare of all. Within this system, the judge oversees the larger purpose.

Seeing so much suffering around her as a child, Sotomayor saw a “glaring” need for change, and law provides an opportunity to enact that change. She recalls the “courageous southern judges” she followed during the Civil Rights movement, judges who “unflinchingly defied mobs and the rule of the crowd” (279). She determines there could be “no higher purpose than to seek justice on behalf of those denied it” (279). She returns to the point she made when presenting the case of Kitty Genovese in her high school speech competition: “There are no bystanders in life” (279). Over time and experience, she has come to see community as broader than her South Bronx neighborhood.

In 1977, Carter visits her community, and Sotomayor sees the neighborhood through the camera lens, forcing her to see the neighborhood’s desolation in ways that are easy to miss while inside it. She concludes that even a carefully ordered civil society leaves many of its members “stranded” (281). It was her early awakening that the law “must work for all or it works for none” (281). She does not judge her contemporaries who “resolved never to look back” once they made it, but she would not have felt “peace of mind” if she did not find “some worthy use” for her good fortune (281). Looking back on her first meeting with Morgenthau, she realizes she had been “deeply primed for what he offered,” concluding that nothing happens by accident (281).