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64 Docket 1 (2016)

handle is hein.journals/dock64 and id is 1 raw text is: 







BUFFALO LAW REVIEW

         THE DOCKET


   VOLUME 64         JANUARY 2016         PAGES 1-13

   Linking Law and Life: Justice Sotomayor's
                   Judicial Voice

                   LAURA KRUGMAN RAYt

    In her five terms on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor
has become the most visible and recognizable Justice. Much
of her public presence is owed to her recent autobiography,
My Beloved World, which appeared in 2013 and promptly
rose to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.' In the
process, Sotomayor became a public celebrity, speaking
candidly about her life in media interviews, appearing on
Sesame Street, throwing out the first baseball at a Yankee
Stadium game, and ushering in the New Year at Times
Square.2
    Readers of Justice Sotomayor's Supreme Court opinions
might be surprised to find few traces of that exuberant
personality. Instead,  Sotomayor's  voice  is  generally
restrained, avoiding the emotional tone that characterizes
her autobiography. But her judicial voice is scarcely dry and
academic. It conveys a distinctive judicial persona, that of a
judge who is often puzzled by the responses of her colleagues
but not indignant in the manner of Justice Scalia3 or playfully


t Professor of Law, Widener University Delaware Law School; J.D., Yale Law
School, 1981; Ph.D., Yale University, 1971; A.B., Bryn Mawr College, 1967.
   1. SONIA SOTOMAYOR, MY BELOVED WORLD (2013); See David Fontana, The
People's Justice?, 123 YALE L.J. FORUM 447, 449 (2014).
   2. For a substantial list of her public appearances, see Fontana, supra note 1,
at 468-69.
   3. Laura Krugman Ray, Judicial Personality: Rhetoric and Emotion in
Supreme Court Opinions, 59 WAsH. & LEE L. REV. 193, 226-29 (2002).

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