Williams, Sotomayor, Rendell for US Supreme Court: US Supreme Court

About Honorable Ann Claire Williams

Williams graduated from Notre Dame Law School in 1975.
President Ronald Reagan appointed Williams as a United States District Judge in the Northern District of Illinois in 1985. In 1985 she became the first African-American woman to become a U.S. District Court judge for the Northern District of Illinois. At age 35, she also was among the youngest judges on the federal bench.
In 1999, President Bill Clinton appointed Williams to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, making her the first African-American appointed to that court.
Both U.S. senators from Illinois, Democrat Richard J. Durbin and Republican Peter Fitzgerald, praised Williams at her investiture.
In 2000 alone, she received the National Black Law Students Association award at the Judge A. Leon Higginbottom Jr. Memorial Luncheon; National Council of Negro Women Women Making History award; award of excellence from the Notre Dame chapter of the Black Law Students Association; Illinois Judicial Council special achievement award; and The Chicago Bar Association Vanguard Award.

Judge Ann Claire Wiliams' Rulings

Backs Privacy Of Hospital Abortion Records

Upholds GM program accused of religious bias

Ruling on patronage hiring convictions

power plant suffers new legal setback

Women's Club Hiring Is Ruled Discriminatory

Ryan could be on way to prison after appeals court denies hearing

Church building confiscated to pay tax debt

Compounds Injustice to Freed Inmate

Bio: http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGetInfo?jid=2591
Notes: http://newsinfo.nd.edu/content.cfm?topicId=334 ,
http://law.nd.edu/features/featured-stories/feature-story-judge-ann-claire-williams-receives-margaret-brent-award

Chicago Lawyer 2000 Person of the Year: Judge Ann Claire Williams

Honorable Judge Sonia Sotomayor

Born June 25, 1954 in New York, Sonia Sotomayor has traveled far beyond the Bronx projects where she grew up to become the first Puerto Rican woman to serve as a U.S. Circuit Court judge.
Urged by a high school friend to attend an Ivy League college, Judge Sotomayor enrolled at Princeton University, finding it a “very foreign experience for someone from the South Bronx.” She refers to her years there as “the single most growing event of my life” and succeeded in graduating summa cum laude in 1976. She went on to Yale Law School where she was the editor of the law journal and received her J.D. degree in 1979.
Sotomayor is a first generation American born to parents who were both from Puerto Rico
Nominated by President George Bush in November 1991, she was confirmed on August 11, 1992 by the U.S. Senate to serve as a federal judge for the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. Only six years later, she was nominated by President William Clinton to serve as an appellate judge and she was confirmed by the Senate on October 2, 1998 to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
She is a member of the American Bar Association, the New York Women’s Bar Association, the Puerto Rican Bar Association, the Hispanic National Bar Association, the Association of Judges of Hispanic Heritage, and the National Council of La Raza. She has received many honors including, most recently, an award from the National Association of Women Lawyers.

Sotomayor became the center of controversy in 1997 when President Clinton announced her nomination for the Court of Appeals. Labeling her a “liberal” and “activist judge,” Republican Party forces tried to block her candidacy amid speculation she was in line to be the first Hispanic nominated to the Supreme Court. (Her name was in fact raised again by Senate Democrats in 2005 as a possible replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.)

Judge Sonia Sotomayors' Rulings

In her rulings, Sotomayor has often shown suspicion of bloated government and corporate power. She's offered a reinterpretation of copyright law, ruled in favor of public access to private information, and in her most famous decision, sided with labor in the Major League Baseball strike of 1995. More than anything else, she is seen as a realist. With a likely 20 years ahead on the bench, she'll have plenty of time to impart her realist philosophy.

Notes: http://www.abanet.org/publiced/hispanic_s.html , http://www.hispanicprwire.com/news.php?l=in&id=9500&cha=9

Honorable MARJORIE O. RENDELL

Judge Rendell, a cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, received her Juris Doctor degree from the Villanova University School of Law in 1973…

Inducted as a judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in March of 1994, Judge Rendell was elevated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in November of 1997. She is the Chair of the United States Judicial Conference Committee on the Administration of the Bankruptcy System and also serves on several Third Circuit committees.

Judge Rendell is a Fellow of the American College of Bankruptcy, an inaugural member and Master of the Villanova University School of Law J. Willard O’Brien Inn of Court, an elected member of The American Law Institute, a member of the Federal Judges Association, the American Judicature Society and the National Association of Women Judges.
In October 2004, Judge Rendell was awarded the Philadelphia Bar Association’s Sandra Day O’Connor Award, an award given annually to a woman attorney whose career in the legal profession has demonstrated: her superior legal talent and significant achievements within the legal community; her advocacy for the advancement and equal treatment of women in the profession and in the community at large; and her mentoring of other women in the legal profession.

Judge Marjorie Rendells' Rulings

Saxe v. State College Area School District

Blocks deporting Egyptian

Kerkorian Appeals Ruling Backing Daimler-Chrysler Merger

Barnhart v. Thomas

Mills v. Maryland

Muhammad v. Close

Sabri v. United States

'Inflammatory' Closing Leads to New Arson Trial

Tosses CBS Janet Jackson Fine

Woman Cannot Be Fired for Having Abortion

Religious Liberties