Obama Picks Sotomayor

President Obama has settled on his Supreme Court pick: Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Judge Sotomayor, 54, who is of Puerto Rican descent, is the first Hispanic to be nominated to the Supreme Court. Sotomayor was raised in a housing project in the Bronx, graduated from Princeton University, and later became an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She then spent five years as a prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney before entering private practice. She was nominated to district court by George H.W. Bush and promoted to the court of appeals by President Clinton. She is perhaps most well-known for her ruling on major league baseball, in which she prevented the MLB from using replacement players. If confirmed, it is thought that Sotomayor will be a moderate judge on the court. Obama met Sotomayor for the first time last Thursday, and only informed her of his decision late last night. "You have to have not only the intellect to be able to effectively apply the law to cases before you," Obama said of his pick in an interview with C-SPAN last week. "But you have to be able to stand in somebody else's shoes and see through their eyes and get a sense of how the law might work or not work in practical day-to-day living."