Didn't Sotomayor do Clinic at Yale?

From the Transcript of Day Two of Hearings:

Senator Leahy:  Did that experience [of working in the District Attorneys Office] shape your views in any way both as a lawyer but also as a judge?

JUDGE SOTOMAYOR: I became a lawyer in the prosecutor's office. To this day I owe who I have become as a -- who I became as a lawyer and who I have become as a judge to Mr. Morgenthau. He gave me a privilege and honor in working in his office that has shaped my life.

When I say I became a lawyer in his office, it's because in law school -- law schools teach you on hypotheticals. They set forth facts for you. They give you a little bit of teaching on how those facts are developed, but not a whole lot, and then they ask you to opine about legal theory and apply legal theory to the facts before you.

Well, when you work in a prosecutor's office, you understand that the law is not legal theory, it's facts. It's what witnesses say and don't say. It's how you develop the -- your position in the record. And then it's taking those facts and making arguments based on the law as it exists. That's what I took with me as a trial judge. It's what I take with me as an appellate judge. It is respect that each case gets decided case by case, applying the law as it exists to the facts before you.

Comments

[Richard Boswell]

Good question about whether Judge Sotomayor did a Clinic at Yale. A better question would be what clinics were available at the time?