Sotomayor Comes Out Swinging on First Day in the Court

Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress at 2:00 PM on October 6, 2009.

Yesterday was the Supreme Court’s opening day, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor took an active role in oral arguments. Sotomayor “displayed no reticence on the first day of her first term on the court; in the two cases on the docket, she asked as many questions and made as many comments as Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.,” reported the Washington Post. “The only sign of her newness was that she at times forgot to turn on her microphone before posing a question.” McClatchy also observed that in just an hour, she actually asked “more questions than Justice Clarence Thomas has asked over the course of several years.” Thomas has gone three years straight without posing a question during oral arguments.

Tagged as: justice, thomas, clarence thomas, sotomayor, sonia sotomayor

Amanda Terkel is Deputy Research Director at the Center for American Progress and serves as Deputy Editor for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.