Mary Sanchez: The empathy of a child informs the wisdom of a justice – Sonia Sotomayor

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor once had to look up the meaning of “summa cum laude” when she was told that she’d earned the distinction at Princeton University.

Understand, she was from a neighborhood where such lofty achievements weren’t discussed, much less held up as a goal for little girls like her.

She was a Puerto Rican child of the Bronx. She had an emotionally neglectful mother who was a nurse, a father who would die young and could end any family gathering with an angry outburst after he consumed enough whiskey, a beloved and protective grandmother she