Meet Sotomayor's Mentor: José A. Cabranes
In 1976, right after she got to Yale Law School, Sonia Sotomayor turned up unexpectedly at a lunch with the university’s general counsel.
At the time, Sotomayor and another student were interested in an interview with then-35-year-old José A. Cabranes. Sotomayor was a Puerto Rican student activist, and Cabranes was the most prominent Puerto Rican lawyer in the country, and his name kept coming up as the possible first Hispanic to be named to the U.S. Supreme Court, the New York Times reports in a Sunday profile.
That meeting was the beginning of a 30-year relationship “first as protégé and mentor, later as often-opposing judges on the same court,” the Times notes. The relationship is cited as one that helped shape Sotomayor’s career.
Cabranes, who now sits on the 2nd Circuit bench, when swearing his one-time protégé onto the court, said, “I was present at the creation.”
The Times juxtaposes Sotomayor’s career with that of Cabranes, who rose through the Ivy League before widespread desegregation, student protests or affirmative action.
“It is generational,” the Times quotes a friend to both, Cesar A. Perales, the president of LatinoJustice P.R.L.D.E.F. “She grew up in a time in which there was such foment within minority communities to establish their rights, right in the middle of all that, a product of the ’60s,” Mr. Perales said. “José came up before all that. He never would have been seen as a victim of discrimination.”
The relationship between Cabranes and Sotomayor is being closely examined these days for a number of reasons, but largely because of their opposing opinions Ricci v. DeStefano a case involving white New Haven firefighters whose promotional test scores were rejected because the department wanted to promote more minorities.
Ricci has become a lightning rod for Sotomayor’s critics, who say the decision proves her liberal activism, the Times reports. Supporters defend the case as one that follows precedent. Judge Guido Calabresi, another member of the 2nd Circuit and one of Sotomayor’s former teachers, characterized the unsigned Ricci ruling as “judicial minimalism,” in that it’s a terse statement that the full circuit declined to review and open up for review the questions that Cabranes wanted to take on.
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