Earlier today, it officially became Justice Sonia Sotomayor:
Sonia Sotomayor was sworn in Saturday morning as the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court in a brief ceremony that completed a remarkable ascent for a Puerto Rican girl from the South Bronx .
Sotomayor, 55, rested her left hand on a Bible held by her mother and raised her right hand as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. administered a pair of oaths that made her the 111th justice to serve on the nation’s highest court. She pledged to “administer justice without respect to persons and do equal right to the poor and to the rich.”
The chief justice, who had slightly flubbed the wording of the oath of office when he swore in President Obama in January, held a piece of paper containing the oath for Sotomayor. Occasionally Roberts looked down as he recited the words.
Immediately after she repeated Roberts’s words in a firm voice, the new justice, wearing a cream-colored suit and a wide smile, gave a long hug to her mother, Celina Sotomayor, and one to her brother, Juan, who stood at her side.
“Congratulations and welcome to the court,” Roberts said.
The two-part ceremony at the court began with a Constitutional Oath, dating to the 1860s, that Roberts administered privately in the justices’ conference room near the rear of the court building on Capitol Hill. They then walked to the court’s paneled East Conference Room, where Sotomayor then took a Judicial Oath before about six relatives and friends, standing beneath a portrait of the renowned 19th century chief justice, John Marshall. The court permitted the second oath to be broadcast on television, marking the first live coverage of such a ceremony in the institution’s history.
Besides Roberts, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy attended the ceremony, as did two members of the White House counsel’s office — who had helped select Sotomayor and shepherd her through the confirmation process. Friends whom Sotomayor invited included Robert Katzmann, with whom she served on the U.S. Second Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, and Rep. Nydia Velasquez (D-N.Y.) The new justice attended a reception following the ceremony.
Sotomayor becomes the third woman ever to serve on the Supreme Court and the first appointee by a Democratic president in 15 years. President Obama nominated her to replace David H. Souter, who announced in early May that, after 19 years as a justice, he intended to retire to his native New Hampshire
Here’s the video:
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