Danville Students Interview Supreme Court Justice

DANVILLE, CA — “My heart started to beat so fast and my head started getting warm,” wrote Rachel Lackner, a 6th grader at Los Cerros Middle School in Danville, about the time she entered a room in a San Francisco church and saw Secret Service agents protecting Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

But the anxiety soon faded as soon as she and Lila Chavez Merritt, a freshman at Monte Vista High School and a fellow KidScoop Media correspondent, began interviewing the justice.

“She had such a calming demeanor that I instantly felt comfortable in her presence,” Rachel said.

The two students had an opportunity to interview Justice Sotomayor thanks to their work with Kidscoop Media, an organization that has helped kid reporters interview everyone from President Barack Obama to Rachel Maddow to Dame Jacinda Ardern, the former prime minister of New Zealand.

Sotomayor, who has sat on the Supreme Court since Obama appointed her in 2009, was in San Francisco promoting her new children’s book “Just Shine!”, a book inspired that uses the lessons of her mother Celina to teach children how to make the world a better place.

“I try to copy my mother’s example and to treat people with the patience and love and kindness that she did,” she reportedly told Lila and Rachel during the interview. “I also try to make sure that everyone in my life knows, like she made everyone know, how special they are. Special to me and special just generally. I said earlier that I try to find the best in people and so I think that all the lessons I was taught about how to treat others came from her.”

Sotomayor also told the students that this means trying to look for the good in everyone, despite differing backgrounds and viewpoints. “As you know, I dissent a lot, and it's only because I, no matter how much I disagree with them, I can still stay friendly with my colleagues because I know what is good in them. Not their opinions, but at least their values as human beings,” Sotomayor said of her relationship with her fellow Supreme Court justices.

“The answers the Justice gave were both thoughtful and eloquently spoken. It was easy to recognize how intellectually gifted she was,” Lila wrote of her time with Sotomayor. “The only rivalry to her phrasing was the beautiful lessons it communicated.”

“I had a wonderful time interviewing Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Celina set the bar high in terms of how to treat people, and because of this book and my time with Justice Sotomayor, I feel I can make this world a better place and know that I can look for the good in everyone,” wrote Rachel.