The compelling Judge Sotomayor

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has a tremendous story to tell, one spanning a South Bronx housing project, Ivy League universities and now nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If confirmed, she would be only the third woman and the first Latino to serve on the court. Her diversity adds to an impressive package of judicial brilliance and experience.

Sotomayor graduated from Princeton University and at the top of her class from Yale Law. She shares commonalities with the man who selected her, including an up-from-the-bootstraps narrative but also in using law degrees to tackle community problems. In Obama's case, it was community organizing; in Sotomayor's, serving as an assistant district attorney in New York, working the hardest cases, including robberies, assaults, murders, police brutality and child pornography.

Sotomayor's lengthy resume offers a rare combination of legal experience, including work as a prosecutor, private litigator, trial judge and appellate judge.

There ought to be debate about judicial philosophy and the correct way to interpret the Constitution, but Sotomayor is not an ideologue or activist judge. She has a lengthy record — having participated in 3,000 rulings and authored about 400 — that appears thoughtful and deliberative.

She was first nominated to the federal bench by a Republican, George H.W. Bush, and promoted later by a Democrat, Bill Clinton, to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.

Sotomayor's sense of empathy is a plus. The Constitution is not a set of abstract rules but laws that require understanding of how they affect real people. Much wanted are judges who bring human sensibility to legal analysis.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg pointed this out in a recent case involving a 13-year-old girl strip-searched by school officials looking for drugs. Some other justices didn't fully grasp the girl's humiliation. Ginsburg later said her colleagues didn't understand because they had never been 13-year-old girls.

In similar fashion, Sotomayor, in a three-member appellate ruling involving strip-searching girls at a juvenile detention center, upheld the legality of such searches but dissented in part, saying they are intrusive.

Critics point distastefully to a 2001 lecture on family law in which Sotomayor said: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

But far from impugning her colleagues, Sotomayor stressed the value of judges with a wide array of experiences.

When a health-care case comes before the court, Sotomayor would likely approach it with knowledge of the law and as a patient living with diabetes since childhood.

Sotomayor must withstand the scrutiny of the U.S. Senate, but what is known about the 54-year-old so far points to an excellent pick.