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‘Small steps’ key to status change-Justice Sotomayor
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Posted on Jan 27 2012
By MAR-VIC CAGURANGAN
Correspondent
TAMUNING, Guam- Constant discussion on political status issue is necessary in order for any U.S. territory to make a judicious decision on its future as a political entity, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonya Sotomayor said.
“Small steps,” she said, can help a jurisdiction reach its different goals.
“Obviously, people get frustrated because you feel that you’re standing still but the reality is that if you look at history our time frame is small,” Sotomayor said at a news briefing.
Sotomayor, the first Latina member of the bench, is a native of Puerto Rico, which itself is struggling with its own choice for a new political status-statehood, free association or independence.
“I could probably argue all three views equally well. I know every argument that everybody makes,” she said. “I say you could give me a position in a debate and I will defend it to the end and I will still not tell that I know what the answer is for.what the right choice is,” Sotomayor added.
In reality, she said, a status change is a long and slow process. “I worry less about standing still because I think that change is something that happens incrementally,” the associate justice said. “Certainly occasionally you have revolutionary change and some would say that each status adjustment that a territory had made is a form of its own revolutionary change but I probably see it more as evolutionary.”
Sotomayor was the guest speaker at the conference held yesterday by U.S. District Court of Guam and the CNMI at the Guam Hilton Resort.
While in Guam, she is scheduled to meet with military officials, visit the Guam Memorial Hospital, and speak before students and faculty of the University of Guam. She will be in the CNMI this weekend.
When asked how she felt upon arrival, Sotomayor replied, “I thought I was back in Puerto Rico,” citing the similarities between the two islands.
