Justice Sonia Sotomayor officially joined the U.S. Supreme Court in a special ceremony Tuesday attended by President Obama; Vice President Joe Biden; her mother, Celina, and brother, Juan; entertainer Ricky Martin, retired Justice David Souter, the man she replaced; members of Congress; federal judges and former top Justice Department officials. The nation’s first Hispanic and third woman to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court took the oath of office again during Tuesday’s event. Actually, the rest of the court does not return for real work until today, when the justices hear arguments in a case involving campaign finance law. Attorney General Eric Holder presented Sotomayor’s ivory-colored commission from Obama. Chief Justice John Roberts administered the oath of office, after which Sotomayor took her seat at the end of the bench to Roberts’ left, next to Justice Stephen Breyer. All her colleagues were in attendance.

Troy Davis, the condemned Georgia inmate who maintains that he is not the man who murdered a Savannah Police officer 20 years ago, will stay alive long enough to try and prove his innocence, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday. Siding with Davis were Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer. Sonia Sotomayor, who was sworn in earlier this month, did not vote on the inmate’s petition. Stevens ordered a federal judge to “receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could not have been obtained at trial clearly establishes petitioner’s innocence.” Davis, whose accusers have recanted their testimony against him in recent years, has found support among a diversity of high-profile figures, including the pope; former President Jimmy Carter; former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu; actors Susan Sarandon and Harry Belafonte; and a host of current and former lawmakers from across the political spectrum. In recent years, Davis has seen his execution halted three times. In June, his supporters delivered petitions bearing about 60,000 signatures to Chatham County, Ga., District Attorney Larry Chisolm, demanding a new trial. Although there was no physical evidence tying the then 19-year-old Davis to the 1989 killing of Officer Mark MacPhail, he was convicted and condemned to death on the testimony of witnesses. Over the past 18 years, seven of the nine witnesses have withdrawn their claims. As expected Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, the high court’s only African-American, objected to the court’s decision Monday, calling it a “fool’s errand.” Wrote Scalia, “Petitioner’s claim is a sure loser. Transferring his petition to the [federal] District Court is a confusing exercise that can serve no purpose except to delay the state’s execution of its lawful criminal judgment.” Last October, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intervene, and a federal appeals court in Georgia granted a temporary stay of execution.

Two more Republican senators have thrown their support behind Judge Sonia Sotomayor, opening the door even wider for the nation’s first Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court nominee.  Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) and Sen. Judd Gregg joined fellow GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina in saying they will vote for Sotomayor’s confirmation, even though Sotomayor would not necessarily be their pick for the high court. “There’s been no significant finding against her. There’s been no public uprising against her,” Bond said. “I do not believe that the Constitution tells me that I should refuse to support her merely because I disagree with her on some cases. I will support her, I’ll be proud for her, the community she represents, and the American dream she shows is possible.” Said Gregg: “Although Judge Sotomayor and I may not see eye-to-eye on all issues or share the same political ideologies, our democratic system should allow for such differences.” The announcement by the two Republican members put them in line with the majority of the American public, whom polls show would like to Sotomayor confirmed. However, the nomination is still split starkly along political lines. While Democrats continue to praise Sotomayor as an intelligent, fair and impartial jurist, the vast majority of Republicans cast her as a liberal, activist judge who’s on a mission to maker her own laws. Sotomayor Confirmation Picks Up More Steam Two more Republican senators have thrown their support behind Judge Sonia Sotomayor, opening the door even wider for the nation’s first Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court nominee.  Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) and Sen. Judd Gregg joined fellow GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina in saying they will vote for Sotomayor’s confirmation, even though Sotomayor would not necessarily be their pick for the high court. “There’s been no significant finding against her. There’s been no public uprising against her,” Bond said. “I do not believe that the Constitution tells me that I should refuse to support her merely because I disagree with her on some cases. I will support her, I’ll be proud for her, the community she represents, and the American dream she shows is possible.” Said Gregg: “Although Judge Sotomayor and I may not see eye-to-eye on all issues or share the same political ideologies, our democratic system should allow for such differences.” The announcement by the two Republican members put them in line with the majority of the American public, whom polls show would like to Sotomayor confirmed. However, the nomination is still split starkly along political lines. While Democrats continue to praise Sotomayor as an intelligent, fair and impartial jurist, the vast majority of Republicans cast her as a liberal, activist judge who’s on a mission to maker her own laws.

U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, repelling the notion that she is an activist judge who is interested in making law rather than upholding law, promised Monday to uphold the “impartiality of our justice system.” Her comments to the Senate Judiciary came after several conservative members of the panel expressed concerns that she is guided by race rather than blind justice. Some honed in on remarks she made more than eight years ago during a speech when she quipped that “a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences” is more qualified to rule on cases than a White male. Sotomayor, 55, the first Hispanic to be nominated to the nation’s highest court, has said that she should not be judged by those comments alone. “My personal and professional experiences help me to listen and understand, with the law always commanding the result in every case,” she said. Despite stinging criticisms launched at her by senators such as Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking minority leader on the committee.  “I will not vote for, and no senator should vote for an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their own personal background, gender, prejudices or sympathies to sway their decision,” Sessions said. But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) seemed to hint that he was leaning toward voting for Sotomayor, saying that Obama had won the election and thus the right to nominate candidates for the high court. “Unless you have a complete meltdown, you’re going to get confirmed,” Graham told her. “And I don’t think you will.” Sotomayor, the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants who was raised in the south Bronx, smiled. “I want to make one special note of thanks to my mother,” the nominee said. “I am here today because of her aspirations and sacrifices for my brother Juan and me.”

Photos: Go on Sonia Sotomayor’s Journey  from her Bronx, N.Y. childhood to her historic Supreme Court nomination.

 White firefighters in Connecticut were wrongly denied promotions because of their race, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday in its final session before summer recess. The 5-4 decision was deemed a major setback for minority advocates because it could affect places of employment across the nation. Adding to the profile of the case, the ruling nullified a decision that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor had endorsed as an appeals court judge. The high court’s conservative majority found that the city of New Haven and the courts that agreed with its nixing of an exam on which Blacks disproportionately scored poorly had acted unconstitutionally. The city had contended that it discarded the test, used to promote firefighters, to avoid a lawsuit from Blacks, but Justice Anthony Kennedy, who delivered the majority opinion, said that New Haven’s action amounted to racial discrimination. “No individual should face workplace discrimination based on race,” Kennedy said. Although it does not eliminate the employers’ ability to consider diversity in hiring decisions, it does limit recruitment and retention practices. The ruling also could make it harder for people of color to prove discrimination based solely on racial hiring or promotions, experts say. The high court decision could not have come at a worse time for Sotomayor, who along with two appeals court colleagues, had ruled the city did the right thing in tossing out the test. The nominees’ critics now have something recent to use against her in the impending Senate confirmation hearings.

 Will the nation’s highest court ponder the case of Georgia death-row inmate Troy Anthony Davis before they take their annual summer recess? If not, Davis, who was convicted in the 1991 murder of an off-duty Savannah Police officer, must wait until the fall to hear his fate in the last-ditch appeal for his life. In the years since his conviction and subsequent death sentence, seven of the nine people who testified against him have recanted their testimonies. In fact, Sylvester “Red” Coles, the first person to finger Davis, now 40, in the murder, has himself been implicated. Moreover, there has never been any physical evidence linking Davis to the shooting death of the 27-year-old officer, Mark Allen MacPHail in the Burger King parking lot two decades ago. Laura Moye of Amnesty International USA’s Death Penalty Abolition Campaign says that even if the high court doesn’t hear Davis’ case before their break it is not necessarily a bad thing. That’s because it “buys more time for all of the advocates to get more publicity on the case,” she said. Davis’ fate essentially would be left in the hands of Chatham County District Attorney Larry Chisolm to pursue Davis’ fourth execution warrant if the courts decide not to hear Davis’ petition. So far, Davis’ execution has been put on hold three times. Support from Davis has come from across the spectrum. Judges, politicians and international leaders have pushed for a new trial. Last month, more than two dozen jurists and federal prosecutors filed a petition saying that Davis can show “new, never reviewed evidence that strongly points to his innocence.” U.S. Rep. John Lewis wants a new trial, and former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI have asked that Davis be spared death by lethal injection.

It wouldn’t be difficult for President Obama to carve out a major historic notch in U.S. history by being one of the rare presidents to nominate someone to the U.S. Supreme Court other than an older White man. In fact, only four presidents – President Johnson (Thurgood Marshall), Ronald Reagan (Sandra Day O’Connor), George H.W. Bush (Clarence Thomas) and Bill Clinton (Ruth Bader Ginsburgh) – have ever appointed a woman or person of color to the esteemed body. Read more.

Obama Getting Pushed to Name the ‘Right’ Justice

In the latest push to get President Obama to appoint the “right” person to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter, a high-powered duo of law-making women say the logical choice is, well, a woman. In a letter to the president on Monday, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said that women comprise more that half the U.S. population but have only one measly seat of the nine on the high court. Read more.

Was the city of New Haven, Conn., right to scrap a promotion exam for firefighters because too few people of color could pass it? That’s the question being pondered by the U.S. Supreme Court, which must decide whether the action violates the civil rights of White applicants. Justice Anthony Kennedy seemed uncomfortable with the city’s decision to do away with the exam, saying that it only appeared it did so after realizing that no African Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be promoted based on the results. “It looked at the results and classified successful and unsuccessful applicants by race,” said Kennedy, a regular opponent of racial classifications. The regular crew of conservatives on the court appeared to be clearly on the side of the White applicants, while the more liberal justices said there is absolutely nothing wrong with nixing a test that had a disparate impact on minorities, which violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “You had some applicants who were winners and their promotion was set aside,” said Justice Antonin Scalia, one the most conservative members of the high court. But Justice David Souter said that ruling against New Haven would likely open up the door to a flood of lawsuits from disgruntled White firefighters. Twenty White firefighters, one of whom is also Hispanic, claimed in a lawsuit that the city violated their rights by trashing the exam. But the city argues that it would have risked a lawsuit anyway by maintaining an exam that gave Whites the edge, since Blacks almost always score lower than Whites on standardized tests.

 Just days after Attorney General Eric Holder urged the nation to stay vigilant in pressing for the maintenance and expansion of minority voting rights, the right-leaning U.S. Supreme Court Monday refused to broaden protections under federal voting rights laws. The 5-4 decision could prove crucial, since it has the potential to affect the redrawing of legislative boundaries after the 2010 Census. The ruling means that electoral districts must have a majority of Blacks or other people of color to benefit from a special provision of the Voting Rights Act. Did the Supreme Court turn its backs on Blacks? Read the rest.