The U. of I. will host “A Conversation with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor” from 7-8 p.m. March 7 at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. Sotomayor will discuss topics with Robin B. Kar, a professor of law, and the discussion will be moderated by Vikram David Amar, the dean of the College of Law.
The event is sponsored by the College of Law and is free and open to the public, but tickets are required. Tickets will be available beginning 10 a.m. Feb. 15 by phone at 217-333-6280, in person at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts ticket office counter or online at KrannertCenter.com.
Following the event, Sotomayor will be available to sign copies of her book “My Beloved World” in the Krannert Center lobby from 8:30-9:30 p.m. Books may be purchased at the Illini Union Bookstore or at the Promenade Shop at Krannert Center.
Sotomayor, who has served on the U.S. Supreme Court since 2009, was born in the Bronx, New York, and is a 1976 summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University. She earned her Juris Doctor in 1979 from Yale Law School, where she served as an editor of the Yale Law Journal. She was an assistant district attorney in the New York County District Attorney’s Office from 1979 to 1984. From 1984 to 1992, she litigated international commercial matters in New York City as an associate and partner with the firm Pavia and Harcourt LLP.
Nominated in 1991 by former President George H.W. Bush to the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, she served in that role from 1992 to 1998, and as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1998 to 2009. President Barack Obama nominated her as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court on May 26, 2009.