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“Sonia Sotomayor”

If a tree falls in Princeton during the summer, and no students are there to hear it, yes, still, nothing ever happens in Princeton. In this week’s edition: Sotomayor yada yada yada, Jeff Peek won’t be attending reunions anytime soon, moving walkways are a moving farce, the Wall Street Journal backs us up on the Kindle thing(!), a lax coach cries, and Stan Katz would love to have you for dinner tonight.

Peek-a-boo-hoo

Peek-a-boo-hoo

  • Meanwhile, theStreet.com updates us on another alum who’s not doing as hot as ol’ Sonia. Jeff Peek ‘69 is CEO of CIT, a company providing small and midsized commercial loans. CIT’s not doing too hot these days, and on Thursday, federal regulators denied CIT a bail out. The company’s stock crashed nearly 75%. The article suggests some fingers are pointing at Peek. And a little digging found that Peek’s wife penned an anonymous article in Portfolio recently, in which she complained about how because of the recession she couldn’t throw moneybags around, or something. Princeton alums: Win some, lose some.
  • This week in “studies that contribute little to our understanding of the world”: The Telegraph reports that “Researchers have found that using [moving walkways] at airports, especially at busy times, can actually slow you down because people reduce their walking pace on the human conveyor belts and cause blockages.” Travelers everywhere slowly are realizing they have been living a lie. Princeton locomotion researcher Manoj Srinivasan contributed mathematical models to the study to show “that people slow down on walkways to reduce energy consumption.” Well, yeah, I’m sure tons of lazy people would ride around in motorized scooters to “reduce energy consumption.”
  • This week in “I told you so”: The Wall Street Journal writes on the latest  trend of using “e-books” instead of hard copy texts in higher education. They report that in a “Student PIRG study, 75% of college students said they would prefer print to digital texts.” The organization running the study “slammed existing e-textbook efforts such as CourseSmart for “being on the wrong track.” The article states also that students in pilot courses testing the Kindle have been bailing out of using the thing, preferring hard copies to e-books. They don’t see the use, it seems. Wait, that sounds familiar… Oh, yes, right, we said that.

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Sotomayor's Nassau Herald Portrait

Sotomayor's Nassau Herald Portrait

Just kidding. No, but seriously, check out her yearbook page from the Nassau Herald. She quotes six-time socialist presidential candidate Norman Thomas, Princeton class of 1905! Did you hear what I said? SOCIALIST.

Sotomayor’s yearbook page and Pyne Prize photo after the jump:

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newsweek-cover

July 20, 2009 Issue

“My days at Princeton … were the single most transforming experience I have had.”

– Sonia Sotomayor in a 1996 speech at the Third World Center (now known as the Carl Fields Center).

Read more about Princeton’s impact on Sotomayor’s life and career in this week’s issue of Newsweek.

Since summer’s in full swing and you’ve got better things to do than catch up on Princeton news, we round it up here for you on The Ink. In this week’s edition: Some people talk about Sonia Sotomayor ‘76, and some Princeton climate researchers serve up some obvious. Our financial troubles aren’t as bad as we tho — oh wait they might be. But at least they’re not as bad as Harvard’s. Campus gets some Dubya flavor, and holy crap a Princeton professor is actually dubbed “the infomercial king.”

First of all OMG SONIA SOTOMAYOR HEARINGS THIS WEEK. Now that that’s out of the way,

  • In the Post, Peter Winn, who taught Sotomayor five courses and advised her senior thesis and calls himself her mentor, wished he could “have taken detailed notes on [their] conversations and filed them away in anticipation.” In anticipation of what? Probably turning it into a screenplay, by the way the rest of the op-ed reads.
Dont cha wish your student was wise like me?

Don't cha wish your student was wise like me?

  • More Post-Princeton antics: University Provost Christopher Eisgruber says that Sonia Sotomayor is boring because she “will be the ninth federal appellate judge on the nine-member Supreme Court” making the body pretty homogeneous in terms of prior experience. Or maybe he’s just jealous.
  • A recent study by some Princeton-led researchers finds that wealthy individuals pollute more. Apparently this was gathered by looking at “lifestyles including frequent airplane flights, automobile use, and heating and cooling of large homes.” File this one under “things we could’ve guessed.” Also under “things I’d look stupid for saying in precept but which professionals get paid to say.”
  • Hey guys, good news! We only lost 25%, not the full 30% we expected! The endowment situation isn’t as disastrous as we thought it was! But… oh, great, Annual Giving’s in the crapper, $11.4 million below expectations. Really doin’ your share, alums.

The rest of the rundown after the jump…

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9500_1While you were off relaxing during your Memorial Day weekend, President Obama and his crack team of legal experts were busy choosing their Supreme Court nominee. The New York Times reported Tuesday morning that Princeton grad and University Trustee Sonia Sotomayor ‘76 will indeed be Obama’s pick (called it!).

Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic justice, and the second Princeton grad on the current Justice roster, along with Samuel Alito ‘72. Obama will make the official announcement in about an hour. We’ll keep you posted as the process develops, including the confirmation battles and any dirt uncovered on the current Federal Judge.

footlooseIn the short time since Sonia Sotomayor ‘76 emerged as a frontrunner to be President Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee, the pundits have already begun slicing and dicing her record and qualifications:

First, there was the New Republic piece that said Sotomayor was a “bully,” “not that smart,” and “has an inflated opinion of herself.”

Then Slate.com wondered why all of the women rumored to be on the shortlist were single and/or lesbian, and if we should care. We learn that Sotomayor was briefly married while at Princeton! (So that’s who lives in Spelman’s married housing–future Supreme Court shortlisters!)

The most recent shortlist, according to the Washington rumor mill, lists six people: Diane Wood of the 7th Circuit, Solicitor General Elena Kagan ‘81, Sotomayor ‘76 of the 2nd Circuit, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm (Canadian and former beauty queen!), Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, and Merrick Garland of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals (the lone shortlister sans with a Y chromosome).

Today, an in-depth piece in The New York Law Journal goes through her most notable cases and presents Sotomayor as a well-prepared, sharp judge who is liberal, but pragmatic. The article quotes lawyers who have lost cases in her courtroom, but who praise her ability to pick apart their arguments.

Hidden among the lengthy list of her notable cases is her 1998 ruling that the Grand Central Partnership and the 34th Street Partnership, two business improvement districts (BIDs) in New York City, violated minimum wage laws. That would be the BIDs co-founded by Dan Biederman ‘75, a.k.a. the father of former USG President Rob Biederman ‘08. Don’t you love playing the “Six Degrees of Separation” game?

And what did the elder Biederman–once called the Mayor of Midtown–do to become entrapped in the Puertorriqueña judge’s legal wrath?

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(image source: esquire.com)

(image source: esquire.com)

With this week’s news of Supreme Court Justice David Souter’s retirement, there’s been speculation about whom Obama will pick to replace the liberal judge. Pundits believe the nominee will most likely be a woman or Latino–or perhaps both!–which is why University trustee Sonia Sotomayor ‘76, who is of Puerto Rican descent, has consistently been mentioned as a shortlist candidate. In fact, some say she is currently the frontrunner.

Sotomayor’s name has been floating around for a while. She’s currently a federal appeals court judge in New York and is well liked by liberal public-interest groups, though she’s considered to be a centrist. In fact, she was first appointed to the federal bench by George H.W. Bush. Her highest-profile case, to date, is probably her 1995 decision that finally ended the Major League Baseball strike.

She’s also crazy smart. At Princeton, Sotomayor was a history major and graduated summa cum laude. Her thesis was on Luis Muñoz Marín, the first democratically elected governor of Puerto Rico. She went on to gradaute from Yale Law, where she was an editor for the Yale Law Journal.

Credentials aside, Sotomayor has a compelling life story. She grew up in a Bronx housing project, and her father died when she was nine years-old. Her single mother raised her and her younger brother by working as a nurse in a methadone clinic.

In 2001, Princeton awarded her an honorary degree, and she became a University trustee in 2007. If nominated, Sotomayor would be only the third woman and first Latino Supreme Court justice. She would also be the second Princetonian to currently sit on the Supreme Court, the other being Justice Samuel Alito ‘72.