In May President Barack Obama nominated Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor to become the next Justice of the US Supreme Court after Justice David Souter announced that he would be stepping down from the high court. After passing confirmation hearings in the US House of Representatives, Sotomayor was approved and confirmed for the Supreme Court Thursday afternoon by a vote of 68-31. Sonia Sotomayor becomes the third woman and the first Hispanic to serve on the US Supreme Court:

Voting largely along party lines, the Senate on Thursday confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the 111th justice of the Supreme Court. She will be the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the court. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was expected to administer the oath of office to Judge Sotomayor, 55, in the next few days, with a formal ceremony likely in September. She succeeds Justice David H. Souter, who retired in June. Democrats celebrated the successful nomination and relatively smooth confirmation process as a bright spot in a summer when they have been buffeted by several challenges, including rocky progress on their attempts to overhaul the nation’s health care system, President Obama’s falling approval ratings, the climbing unemployment rate and other lingering economic problems. Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation was never in much doubt, given Democrats’ numerical advantage in the Senate. But the final vote — 68 to 31 — represented a partisan divide. No Democrat voted against her, while all but 9 of the chamber’s 40 Republicans did so. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, is ailing and did not vote. During three days of debate on the Senate floor, Republicans labeled Judge Sotomayor a liberal judicial activist, decrying several of her speeches about diversity and the nature of judgments, as well as her votes in cases involving Second Amendment rights, property rights and a reverse-discrimination claim brought by white firefighters in New Haven … From the moment Mr. Obama chose her in May, many political strategists warned Republicans that opposing the first Latina nominated to the Supreme Court would jeopardize the party in future elections. In the waning days of the debate, some Democrats sought to portray Republican opposition as a grave insult to Latinos. “Republicans will pay a price for saying ‘no’ to this judge,” Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said in Spanish at a news conference Wednesday. And in July, the National Rifle Association, which historically has stayed out of judicial nomination fights, came out against Justice Sotomayor and said it would include senators’ confirmation vote in its legislative scorecard on gun-rights issues for the 2010 election — a pointed threat to Democrats from conservative-leaning states. But attempts to appeal to interest-group politics in the confirmation process largely faltered. The final vote was “a triumph of party unity over some of the interest group politics that you would have expected to play a bigger role,” said Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative Committee for Justice, which opposed Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation.

Despite the threats from the Republican party, there was really never any doubt that Judge Sotomayor would be approved for the Supreme Court. What an amazing and history-making day for the United States of America. In the long history of the Supreme Court, there has never been a person of Hispanic descent on the court … and now, Sotomayor is the first. I have every confidence that she will full her oath and commitment to the Court to the best of her ability, ruling both judiciously and prudently. Congratulations Justice Sotomayor!!

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