Morality, Justice, and Giving Back Theme Analysis

Given that Sonia Sotomayor is an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States, her memoir is naturally concerned with questions of morality, justice, and how to create a just and equitable society through legal means. However, Sotomayor doesn’t stop at simply articulating how justice works on a grander scale or how it plays out in the life of a lawyer in private practice or at the local DA’s office. Rather, Sotomayor makes the case that everyone, even people outside of the legal profession, have endless opportunities to uphold justice by behaving in ways that are good, moral, and helpful to others. Sotomayor positions this constant effort to give back and help others on a smaller scale as some of the most important work a person can do, even if a person also has the ability to enact change on a larger scale.

One of the many ways that a person can create these smaller positive changes in the world is to help make a path for others who hope to follow the same trajectory. Sotomayor recognizes that this is the only reason she knows to apply to Ivy League schools in the first place—a friend who graduated a year before her, Ken, calls her in the fall of her senior year and tells her to focus on the Ivies. Without Ken’s advice, Sotomayor would’ve had no idea what Ivy League schools even were, given that their Catholic high school pushes students toward religious colleges if they advocate for college at all. Sotomayor recognizes that by attending Princeton—and by joining the student groups that recruit and support new minority students—she can do exactly as Ken did and show other kids that it’s possible for a poor Latinx student to do well at a prestigious school. Visibility, she suggests, matters a great deal. Thus, through becoming the first Latinx person and one of the first female judges on the Supreme Court, Sotomayor is able to set an example for children who look like her or share her sex. Because she paved the way, they can more easily see themselves following in her footsteps.

However, Sotomayor suggests, it’s not enough to just be visible and to set an example. It’s also important to make it clear to others that racism, sexism, and other prejudice that holds many people back is both horrific and illegal, which she has the opportunity to do after a disastrous interview with a prestigious law firm while at Yale. During a dinner interview, a partner with the firm essentially suggests that Sotomayor wouldn’t be at Yale at all without affirmative action, implying that minority or female students aren’t as smart as the white and male students that the partner is used to interviewing. Rather than let the incident slide, Sotomayor reports it to a Yale student tribunal. When the tribunal rules in her favor and the firm eventually issues a public apology, she suggests that this sets an important precedent and a warning to other powerful firms and institutions: bad behavior like the partner exhibited won’t be tolerated by Yale. This, in turn, makes Yale a more welcoming place for minority students, as it shows that the school will stand up for its students when they face discrimination and prejudice. This incident allows Sotomayor to continue her project of helping others who will come after her, as her willingness to stand up for herself and seek recourse means that someone else might not face this issue at all.

Finally, through her observations and experiences over the course of her career, Sotomayor also comes to understand that employers and bosses have a responsibility to make the workplace more accessible, flexible, and accepting of women and mothers if society expects women to work. Though Sotomayor doesn’t suffer as much as some of her peers do due given that she never has children, Sotomayor still witnesses some of her female peers experience discrimination due to their sex or their reproductive choices. This is why in her capacity as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, she always allows the children of her clerks to call their parents at work—as the boss, she has the power to make these changes that might not rise to the level of something that might appear in front of a judge in court, but rather are small changes that she and others in charge can make to make the world a better, fairer place. By making small changes like these, Sotomayor proposes that it’s not enough to rule fairly on high profile court cases about affirmative action, discrimination, or workplace laws; laws and lawsuits alone won’t solve the world’s problems. Rather, everyone who has the power to help others should do so by setting an example, standing up for themselves and for others, and creating friendly, open environments for everyone.