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Supreme Court Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor will be awarded the 2024 Radcliffe Medal — the highest honor awarded by the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study — in a ceremony on May 24, according to a Thursday press release.
“I can think of no more deserving a recipient of our 2024 Radcliffe Medal than Justice Sonia Sotomayor,” Radcliffe Institute Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin said in the press release.
The Radcliffe Medal is presented yearly to “an individual who has had a transformative impact on society,” according to the Institute’s website.
As the 39th recipient of the award, Sotomayor joins a distinguished list of recipients, including former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Madeleine K. Albright, current Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen, and former Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust.
Sotomayor is the third woman who has served on the Supreme Court to receive the award. The Radcliffe Medal was previously awarded to Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Since becoming dean of the Radcliffe Institute in 2018, Brown-Nagin has awarded the Radcliffe Medal to four other women: Dolores Huerta, Melinda French Gates, Sherrilyn Ifill, and Ophelia Dahl.
Sotomayor will be presented the award on Radcliffe Day — when the Institute holds keynote speeches and moderates discussions related to the work of the Medal’s recipient — during Harvard University’s Commencement Week. Actress Rita Moreno will provide a testimonial at the event, followed by a conversation between Sotomayor and former Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow.
A daughter of immigrants, Sotomayor grew up in a low-income single-parent household in New York. She later graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1976 before attending Yale Law School.
Sotomayor was appointed to the Supreme Court in 2009 by former U.S. president Barack Obama, becoming the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the nation’s highest court.
The Institute’s press release said Sotomayor has built a “reputation as a defender of the voiceless and marginalized in society, and she has demonstrated the force of vigorous dissent.”
That vigorous dissent has also been used to defend Harvard. Last year, Sotomayor dissented from the Supreme Court’s ruling that declared Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policy unconstitutional and limited affirmative action in college admissions. Sotomayor detailed Harvard’s history of slavery, racism, and discrimination and cited the University’s report on the legacy of slavery.
Sotomayor most recently presided over the annual Ames Moot Court Competition at Harvard Law School last November, judging the arguments of mock appellate cases presented by HLS students. Sotomayor previously judged the competition in 2018 and 2011.
—Staff writer S. Mac Healey can be reached at mac.healey@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @MacHealey.
—Staff writer Saketh Sundar can be reached at saketh.sundar@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @saketh_sundar.
