Judges

In nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, President Obama tapped a veteran jurist whose humble upbringing and moderate-to-liberal record is unlikely to trigger an ideological battle in the Senate. Sotomayor, 54, would be the first Latino on the court. Legal experts said that her narrowly written opinions resembled those of the justice she would replace, David H. Souter. She has not ruled squarely on controversial issues such as gay rights or abortion.

The early White House story line on Sonia Sotomayor emphasizes her pragmatism and a cautious, measured approach to the law developed over a years-long climb from exceedingly modest circumstances to becoming the first Latino nominee to the Supreme Court. But an incident in the fall of 1978 illustrates another side of Sotomayor. Then a daring and assertive Yale University law student, she took a stand against a white-shoe Washington law firm that could have jeopardized her career.

Getting nominated to one of the rare openings on the U.S. Supreme Court requires an element of luck. Sonia Sotomayor appears to have had an abundance of it in recent months. On Tuesday, President Obama picked Sotomayor, 54, a federal appeals court judge from New York City, to replace retiring Justice David H. Souter. She also hit the jackpot Nov. 23 in a Florida casino, collecting $8,283 while gambling with her 81-year-old mother.

While some prominent conservative activists are accusing President Obama's Supreme Court nominee of racism, more Republicans are telling them to chill out and "grow up," or they risk damaging the party's chances of expanding its reach to women and Latinos.

When President Obama nominated federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court, ethnic advocacy groups praised the selection of the first Latino to the nation's highest court. Yet some political opponents, such as Republican strategist Karl Rove, sought to downplay the nomination's significance by pointing out that Benjamin N. Cardozo, who served on the Supreme Court in the 1930s, was born to parents who claimed Portuguese descent. So did that make him the first Latino?

It did not take long after moving 60 miles from the ethnically diverse neighborhoods of the Bronx to the campus of Princeton University for Sonia Sotomayor to make it clear she was not happy with the way the overwhelmingly white, male school was run. In her sophomore year, Sotomayor walked into the office of university President William G. Bowen to demand more Latino faculty and students.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor, already facing controversy for a 2001 speech on the virtue of having "a wise Latina" as a judge, made similar comments in a series of speeches released Thursday. She said the nation is "deeply confused" about the proper role of race and ethnic identity, and she maintained that her identity as a Latina shaped her life and her work in court. She hoped "a wise Latina" would reach a "better conclusion" than a white male, she said on several occasions.

In the three months since he was jailed for contempt of court, attorney Richard Fine has been sitting in solitary confinement in an 8-foot by 13-foot cell with bare white walls and no windows. What's left of his silver-gray hair is disheveled, and a bright orange prison jumpsuit and a yellow wrist tag have taken the place of his usual dark suit and bow tie. For lunch, he gets a bologna or a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich; for dinner, two hot dogs or a white glob he assumes is breaded chicken.

The detectives crouched low, guns in hand, sweeping the crumbling apartments, moving cautiously from room to room, barking at the two prosecutors to stay back, to watch out. The lawyers were children of the city, raised in ethnic neighborhoods by families of modest means. But the poverty here in central Harlem startled them. Some of the abandoned buildings served as shooting galleries, places where drug addicts congregated. The air was rank, the threat of violence palpable.

When John G. Roberts Jr. took over as chief justice at the Supreme Court four years ago, he sounded the same theme that President Obama did more recently. The court was too divided and too polarized, he said, and he proposed a type of judicial bipartisanship. He said he would seek a broader agreement among the justices, even if it sometimes meant deciding cases more narrowly.