Justice Sotomayor prefers "Sonia from the Bronx"

The following script is from "Justice Sotomayor" which aired on Jan. 13, 2013. Scott Pelley is the correspondent. Henry Schuster, producer.

Interviews with Supreme Court justices are rare. But tonight even more so because in 223 years, there has never been a justice like Sonia Sotomayor. Among other things, she's the first Hispanic on the Court, she's the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants who settled in the Bronx -- that New York melting pot that pours out streetwise kids and American success stories.

Sotomayor, now 58 years old, calls the streets of her childhood, "My Beloved World," and that's the name of her new memoir. In her first broadcast interview, she told us that the neighborhood gave a poor girl, with a serious illness, a chance to serve and an opportunity to become one of the most powerful women in America.

Scott Pelley: This is where you grew up?

Sonia Sotomayor: In a public housing project. I lived in this one on the corner. Hold on.

[Sonia Sotomayor (in Spanish): Hello. How are you?

Neighbor: Welcome to your old neighborhood.

Sonia Sotomayor (in Spanish): Thank you.]

You could believe she never left. They remember and she's never forgotten. Seems the only difference is the security detail which she really never needed in the Bronx.

Scott Pelley: You know, your brother told us that more than once in this neighborhood he got beaten up.

Sonia Sotomayor: Yep. And more than once I beat up the person who beat him up.

Scott Pelley: You stood up for your brother.

Sonia Sotomayor: Oh, you asked me the other day if I was a tough cookie, and---

A tough cookie who never crumbled at a setback.

Sonia Sotomayor: I am the most obstinate person you will ever meet. I have a streak of stubbornness in me that I think is what has accounted for some of my success in life. There is some personal need to persevere, to fight the fight. And if you just try and be stubborn about trying you can do what you set your mind to.

Sonia Sotomayor set her mind to being a judge at the age of 10. And three presidents agreed. Appointed to a federal court by the first George Bush, she was promoted to the Appeals Court by Bill Clinton. And in 2009 selected for the Supreme Court by President Obama.

Scott Pelley: Your first day working here: terrifying?

Sonia Sotomayor: Overwhelmingly terrifying. I was so anxiety ridden. I was so nervous that day that my knees knocked. And I thought everybody in the courtroom could hear them knocking.

Scott Pelley: Well, come on. You'd been a federal judge for more than 15 years at that point.

Sonia Sotomayor: I had not been a Supreme Court justice. It's a very different stage.

On this stage she's one of the most vocal questioners. And her vote most often falls on the liberal side. She helped uphold the Health Care Act and strike down tough illegal immigration statues. Back in the Bronx as a girl, she set her heart on being a cop --inspired by Nancy Drew novels and TV. But by the age of 8, the plot of her life was rewritten by diabetes.

Scott Pelley: The doctors told you because of your Type 1 diabetes--

Sonia Sotomayor: --Type 1 diabetes. At any rate--

Scott Pelley: --you couldn't be a cop.

Sonia Sotomayor: Yes, I couldn't be a cop. I figured out very quickly, watching "Perry Mason," that I could do some of the same things by being a lawyer.

[Perry Mason: Objection]

Scott Pelley: So, we are sitting in the Supreme Court today because you read "Nancy Drew" and watched "Perry Mason" on TV?

Sonia Sotomayor: That's exactly right.

Her body would forever be dependent on insulin but her ambitions were set free.

Sonia Sotomayor: I had a life in which I was in a hurry.

Scott Pelley: How long did you expect to live?

Sonia Sotomayor: At that time, it was not unusual for most juvenile diabetics to die in their 40s.

Scott Pelley: And this was hanging over you; this was something you thought about?

Sonia Sotomayor: Oh, I thought about it a lot. And I got in as much as I could do at every stage of my life. I studied very hard. I partied very hard. I love playing very hard. And I did it all to try to pack in as much as I could.

Did she ever. Honors in Catholic high school led to a scholarship to Princeton. Top honors there led to law at Yale and then straight to New York as a prosecutor. The pay was lousy, the hours inhuman. She was smoking three and a half packs a day -- listening to victims -- sending thieves and killers to prison and learning something about people.

Sonia Sotomayor; They can be evil. I don't know that before I came to the DA's office, that I understood that there were some people who were that bad. It's one of the reasons I left the DA's office, because that lesson made me realize that if I stayed in the practice of criminal law, I might lose some of my optimism about human nature.

Scott Pelley: Are some people beyond redemption?

Sonia Sotomayor: People do some very bad things that are still human beings with some redeeming qualities. They can do some horrible things, but they're still valuable human beings in other ways. But yes, I do believe there are some people who are evil and perhaps can't be redeemed.

After four year with the DA, and the end of her marriage to her high school sweetheart, Sotomayor cleared her mind and the air. She quit smoking and joined a firm practicing corporate law where some of the men didn't seem all that comfortable with her.

Scott Pelley: You write in your book that one day one of the associates-- one of your colleagues was on the telephone and he described you, your words, not mine, as--

Sonia Sotomayor: His words.

Scott Pelley: --as one tough bitch.

Sonia Sotomayor: Yeah.

Scott Pelley: And when you heard that, you thought what?

Sonia Sotomayor: What in the world is wrong with me? I was a pretty tough negotiator and hard to push around. And I don't think they were used to my kind of toughness then.

Scott Pelley: Is his description in any way unfair?

Sonia Sotomayor: Probably not.

She's been called a lot of things, but she told us more than "Madam Justice" she prefers another title.

Sonia Sotomayor: It's Sonia from the Bronx.

Scott Pelley: What does it mean to be Sonia from the Bronx?

Sonia Sotomayor: It means to be a part of this particular community...a vibrant, loving, giving community. And it's something very special.

The Bronx of her childhood was a place where immigrants got a foothold on the dream. It's a picture she paints in the memoir "My Beloved World" and a life she lives today. You'll find her with the Bronx Bombers in Yankee Stadium and at the annual dream big celebration thrown by the Bronx Children's Museum.

[Sotomayor on stage: Don't ever stop dreaming, don't ever stop trying, there's courage in trying.]

Scott Pelley: Why is it important to you?

Sonia Sotomayor: Kids are important to me. I want one of the hallmarks of my tenure to be that I gave something to kids, that I gave something to our future.

Her own inspiration was her mother Celina Sotomayor, who would end up raising the children mostly alone.

Scott Pelley: Your father was an alcoholic?

Sonia Sotomaor: He was.

Scott Pelley: Did you understand what that meant as a child?

Sonia Sotomayor: No. I had sort of a childlike appreciation that he couldn't help himself. I also watched him die from drinking.

He died when she was 9. Her mother pushed education. And in 1972, Sotomayor was near the top in her high school class when she got an offer from a university she had never heard of, Princeton. It was a combination of talent, perseverance and affirmative action.

Scott Pelley: Do you think anyone ever resented the notion that you might have had a door opened for you by affirmative action?

Sonia Sotomayor: You can't be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action. From the first day I received in high school a card from Princeton telling me that it was possible that I was gonna get in, I was stopped by the school nurse and asked why I was sent a possible and the number one and the number two in the class were not. Now I didn't know about affirmative action. But from the tone of her question I understood that she thought there was something wrong with them looking at me and not looking at those other two students.

Now essentially the same question that the nurse asked is before Sotomayor on the Court. A white student has filed suit saying that affirmative action kept her out of the University of Texas.

Scott Pelley: You have declined to talk to us about cases before the Court, whether they're before the Court currently or have already been ruled on by the Court, and I wonder why.

Sonia Sotomayor: People sometimes don't understand that judge can have personal experiences even personal opinions. But I think that if you talk publicly about those things, that people will jump to the conclusion that you've already made up your mind in some way.

On affirmative action her "personal experience" has been powerful.

Scott Pelley: Is there a role for it today?

Sonia Sotomayor: The affirmative action of today is very different than it was when I was going to school. And each school does it in a different way. I can't pass judgment on whether there's a role for it or not without it being seen as I'm making a comment on an existing case. But I do know that, for me, it was a door opener that changed the course of my life.

What never changed was diabetes but it hasn't slowed her down, she tests her blood and takes insulin when and where she needs to.

In her chambers you hear Spanish in the air. And it was here that we met a woman of great ambition -- but even she -- Celina Sotomayor had to be amazed that this was her daughter's office and that she would hold the Bible at the swearing in of a justice.

Celina Sotomayor: I didn't have to do anything. I just taking the-- the-- taking-- glory for that. But-- it had n-- nothing to do with it.

Scott Pelley: I suspect you may have had something to do with it along the way.

Sonia Sotomayor: I think -- my mom-- is too fond of not taking enough credit.

Celina Sotomayor: Sonia, you always were in charge.

Next week, Justice Sotomayor will be in charge of delivering the oath to the vice president of the United States. It will be 40 years since that high school nurse asked why Princeton had picked Sonia from the Bronx.

Sonia Sotomayyor: And the memory of it has really never left me. Because it is the look that so many people give you. It's the look that I was still receiving when I was nominated to the Supreme Court. Was I capable enough? We have to prove ourself. And we have to work hard at doing it.

Scott Pelley: That's where the stubbornness comes from.

Sonia Sotomayor: That's where the stubbornness comes from. For me at least it's the stubbornness to say, "I'm going to do it. And I'm going to do it well.