“Your reputation starts here,” Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor (center) told Boston University law students October 24 at this year’s Shapiro Lecture. LAW Dean Angela Onwuachi-Willig (left) introduced Sotomayor and Cesar Lopez-Morales (LAW’14) (right) at the Tsai Performance Center.

Business & Law

Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor Offers Advice, Insight to BU Law Students at Annual Shapiro Lecture

She spoke with her former law clerk Cesar Lopez-Morales (LAW’14) in a wide-ranging conversation at the Tsai Performance Center

As any law student would be, the Boston University School of Law students gathered to hear this year’s Shapiro Lecture were curious about how to secure a coveted clerkship. A clerkship—a post–law school position to assist a judge with legal research, writing, and case management—can be a critical stepping stone to a respected position in the legal field. 

And the students in the audience of an at-capacity Tsai Performance Center on Friday were in a particularly good position to ask for advice: this year’s speaker was Sonia Sotomayor, an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court. Her former law clerk, Cesar Lopez-Morales (LAW’14), was in conversation with her for the event. 

“Your reputation starts here,” Sotomayor told the students. “Your reputation—and your integrity—are all you have. You must guard them.” She emphasized the specific kind of supportive mentorship young lawyers can gain from a clerkship, describing it as one of the only opportunities in the legal profession to build that kind of relationship. 

Lopez-Morales, who was a law clerk for Sotomayor during the October 2023 Supreme Court term, underlined just how much he learned from the experience. “During my clerkship, I’d go into the Supreme Court building every day and see the words ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ etched into the stone,” he told her. “It was working for you, and working in your chambers, that gave those words a very real meaning.”

Despite fostering a great number of clerks throughout her illustrious career, Sotomayor said she never served as a law clerk herself. 

“The greatest professional mistake I made is that I didn’t clerk. Of course, I say that tongue-in-cheek, because I’m on the Supreme Court, so it wasn’t a fatal error, but it was not a good judgment,” she said with a sense of humor typical of her remarks throughout the evening. 

Most of the conversation was held on stage, but toward the end of the lecture, Sotomayor stepped down to field questions and take photos with students. 

Walking through the crowd in a pair of red and white Nike Dunk sneakers—the colors a nod to BU’s signature scarlet and white—Sotomayor spoke passionately about the legal profession and the good it can do in the world. (Angela Onwuachi-Willig, Ryan Roth Gallo Professor of Law and dean of the BU School of Law, who introduced Sotomayor and Lopez-Morales at the event, was sporting a matching pair of Nikes.) 

Sotomayor was nominated by President George H. W. Bush to the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in 1991. In 1997, President Bill Clinton nominated her to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where she heard more than 3,000 cases and wrote nearly 400 opinions. In 2009, President Barack Obama nominated her to the high court. She’s the first Latina justice, and when she was confirmed became the third woman to serve on the Supreme Court. Three more have followed her. 

In her majority opinions and her dissents, Sotomayor has become known for voicing opinions that side with more liberal viewpoints on a host of consequential issues, including campaign finance (Citizens United v. FEC), police conduct and the Fourth Amendment (Heien v. North Carolina), legalizing same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges), and more recently, presidential immunity (Trump v. United States). 

Sotomayor’s powerful and sometimes blistering dissents routinely make national headlines, and one student in the audience asked how the associate justice navigates the stark ideological differences with her colleagues on the bench. 

She started her answer with a story about her mother. Growing up, Sotomayor’s mother had a friend whose monologues could stretch on and on. Whenever Sotomayor and her brother saw this friend coming, she said, they’d scatter—Sotomayor to her room to read, and her brother to the nearest basketball court in their Bronx neighborhood. Later, Sotomayor asked her mother how she had patience with this friend. Her mother replied that, sure, she could be a little frustrating, but she was a good person who needed an outlet. 

“I walked away from that conversation and realized a simple lesson: in everybody who annoys you or frustrates you, there’s something good. You have to really look for it sometimes, but even with people who have different ideas than you […] if you try to find the good in them, you’re likely to find it. Once you find that, you can forgive a lot and live better with your frustrations. 

“That’s what I do on my Court. I live with my colleagues in a friendly way,” she said. “I think most of my colleagues like me as a person, and they like me because I like them as people—even when I think they’re crazy as judges, and even though I disagree with them. Of course, there are moments I’m deeply angry, and other moments I’m deeply sad, but I also realize I have to live with them, and I have to go on to the next case, the next battle, the next moment.” 

When Lopez-Morales asked what advice Sotomayor had for law students feeling disillusioned by recent Supreme Court decisions they disagreed with, she had a quick answer: “If you’re going to become a lawyer because you think you’re going to win every case,” she said bluntly, “quit law school. 

“What lawyers do is represent the interests of people who have a problem, and people who need someone to be a champion to stand up and be their voice,” she said. The legal profession is the only one “that has as one of its ethical obligations to serve the poor with no charge,” she added.

“I loved being a lawyer, and I love—although maybe not right now as much—being a judge. Any job you take in law, you can still do good, and I hope you become, and stay, as excited as I am about being a lawyer.”