New Haven's legal links to Sotomayor

New Haven (WTNH) - Today President Barack Obama announced his choice for the country's next Supreme Court Justice. Sonia Sotomayor is a graduate of Yale Law School and has even ruled on the controversial reverse discrimination case known as the New Haven 20.

At Yale Law School, Professor Guido Calibresi was beaming with pride. He was Sotomayor's first law professor and he even managed to dig up her first exam.

"And as I remembered she had a written a terrific exam," Professor Calibresi said.

Judge Sotomayor and Judge Calibresi went from teacher-student to colleagues on the bench. Calibresi is a federal judge in New Haven and has often worked with his former pupil.

"She is a restrained judge. She does not reach out to decide issues that are not before her and that's important. But she has views on the law, she expresses them well and she has caused me to change my mind," he said.

But it's Sotomayor's views on the law in a case involving a dispute between the City of New Haven and a group of white and Hispanic firefighters that has earned her the ire of some conservative groups who call her an activist judge. Sotomayor was on a three judge panel that ruled the city was within it's right to throw out results of a promotional exam because too few minorities scored high enough. The case of the New Haven 20 is now before the Supreme Court.

Former prosecutor Jeff Meyer teaches at Quinnipiac Law School and has argued cases before Sotomayor and says she's not an activist at all.

"What you see in her opinions is she is not an ideological judge. She is not a judge with pre-conceived notions in how a particular case should come out. In my experience, before her you saw she is very attentive to the facts and to follow the law where ever it may lead," Meyer said.

If confirmed, Sotomayor would be the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court and only the third woman.