15 July 2009 / AP, WASHINGTON
Intensely focused, Sonia Sotomayor sits like a statue as senator after senator addresses her, as well as a nationwide TV audience, at her confirmation hearing for Supreme Court justice.
Occasionally, she nods her head when one of them says something particularly nice about her. But for the most part Sotomayor maintains a steady glare at those speaking to her, just as she has glared at the lawyers who've come before her in the 17 years she's been a federal judge in New York. Sotomayor's eyes never stray from the face of the speaker, however unsavory the message coming her way. Her lips remain closed. It is as if she is still wearing a robe rather than a bright blue jacket draped over her shoulders, the stage lights of a Senate hearing room upon her. Her demeanor on Monday was familiar to those who have watched her over the years in the courts, where she generally kept her comments to the legal issues before her and glared intently at each speaker, sometimes leaning over the bench. In court, she was known to sometimes interrupt lawyers when they didn't seem to be getting to the point in addressing a legal issue she was exploring. She was often forceful, but not angry. Early in her judicial career, she acknowledged that “people who meet me initially often get intimidated by me.” “I think in retrospect it is my intensity,” she said then, adding that when people get to know her they don't find her forbidding.
