Scenes From Judge Sotomayor’s Courtroom

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IN nominating Sonia Sotomayor to fill Justice David Souter’s seat on the Supreme Court, President Obama chose someone similar to himself in experience and intellect. What may surprise those who have read criticisms of Judge Sotomayor’s personality on the bench — largely, descriptions of her by anonymous detractors as imperious and a “bully” — is that she also mirrors the president’s measured temperament.

I have known the judge for 13 years, and found myself assisting her and sometimes at odds with her professionally. She hired me as a summer intern in her chambers when she served on the federal district court in New York in the 1990s. While that obviously makes me somewhat biased, I think two incidents from that time make the case for her temperament.

The first was a criminal trial she presided over in which the lawyers on both sides were inexperienced and made a number of strange decisions. One tried to hand the judge his exhibits and kept strolling up to the bench during his questioning, which is not typical courtroom behavior. As a former prosecutor, Judge Sotomayor was clearly perplexed, but she bent over backward to keep things running smoothly. After the verdict came in, she invited the lawyers to her chambers for a private conversation and spent at least an hour advising them on how to improve their trial and cross-examination skills.

On another occasion, I drafted some research for her that was not well written. When she discussed the memo with me, she started by saying, “You are too smart for me,” and proceeded to ask me a series of questions that I had not addressed. I realized later that this was her polite way of saying: “This isn’t good. Do it over.” She could have said just that, but evidently decided that positive reinforcement was the way to go. This is exactly the kind of skill that a Supreme Court justice needs to persuade her colleagues, who tend to have powerful personalities and do not take criticism well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/opinion/27magliocca.html?_r=1&th&emc=th