The Movie That Made a Supreme Court Justice (and her dissent today)

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(Ed Ou/The New York Times). Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor with the interim dean at Fordham Law, Michael M. Martin, center. After a screening of “12 Angry Men,” Justice Sotomayor spoke about the law as a theme in popular culture and how the film had influenced her life.


Around the time that Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor was entering college, the man who would eventually become her husband took her to see a film by Sidney Lumet. It was “12 Angry Men,” from 1957, about a jury deliberating on the case of a young man accused of murder.

That film turned out to be a pivotal moment in the life of Justice Sotomayor, who at the time had been considering a career in law. In particular, she was inspired by a moment in the film in which one of the jurors, a naturalized American citizen, expresses reverence for the American jury system.

“It sold me that I was on the right path,” she told an audience Sunday evening at the Fordham University School of Law after a screening of the film. “This movie continued to ring the chords within me.”

The organizers of the Fordham Law Film Festival had invited Justice Sotomayor, who last year became the first Hispanic-American to serve on the Supreme Court, to pick a film for the event. She chose “12 Angry Men,” Mr. Lumet’s first feature film.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/18/nyregion/18sonia.html


Perhaps not so coincidentally, Justice Sotomayor issued a strongly worded dissent in a criminal rights case today. JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, dissenting from denial of certiorari:

"Petitioner Anthony Pitre, a Louisiana state prisoner,stopped taking his HIV medication to protest his transfer to a prison facility. He alleges that respondents at the facility punished him for this decision by subjecting him to hard labor in 100-degree heat. According to Pitre, respondents repeatedly denied his requests for lighter duty more appropriate to his medical condition, even after prison officials twice thought his condition sufficiently serious to rush him to an emergency room...

I cannot comprehend how a courtcould deem such allegations “frivolous.” Because I believe that Pitre’s complaint states an Eighth Amendment viola-tion, I would grant the petition for a writ of certiorari andreverse the judgment below."

http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-9515.pdf


I will say it again, Justice Sotomayor is the best decision President Obama has ever made.