Sonia Sotomayor Brings Salsa, Trouble to the Supreme Court – US News

From US News & World Report:

America may have its first celebrity Supreme Court justice, author Joan Biskupic says.

It was fairly early in the writing process when author Joan Biskupic, the biographer of Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Antonin Scalia, heard about Justice Sonia Sotomayor and “the salsa incident.”

As the story goes, it was June 2010 and the Supreme Court justices and their law clerks were celebrating the end of term with the clerks performing skits for their bosses. For Sotomayor, who had joined the high court in August 2009, it was the first of such occasions. “Here’s what you should know: By tradition, the clerks perform, the justices watch,” Biskupic explains to Whispers.

[READ: Sonia Sotomayor Spent the Summer Reading Up on Antonin Scalia]

But that year, after the law clerks were done with their skits, Sotomayor “sprang from her chair, turned to the law clerks and declared that although their musical numbers were all fine enough, they lacked a certain something,” Biskupic writes.

 She then demonstrated what they missed. “She cues the salsa music – at first she grabs a few of her law clerks who clearly had been in on it with her,” Biskupic says. She eventually got Chief Justice John Roberts on his feet, signaling this was socially acceptable to the remaining, seated justices. “[Roberts] was a good sport. He was an anxious sport, but he was a good sport, and then she gets the others to go,” Biskupic says.

The whole incident led to Scalia (the life of a party in his own right, according to Biskupic) joking, “I knew she’d be trouble,” as people passed him near the door.

READ the rest about this Bronx Hero at: Sonia Sotomayor Brings Salsa, Trouble to the Supreme Court – US News.

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