There are uses to adversity, and they don't reveal themselves until tested. Whether it's serious illness, financial hardship, or the simple constraint of parents who speak limited English, difficulty can tap unexpected strengths.

If the issue is letting the states experiment and letting the society have more time to figure out its direction, why is taking a case now the answer?

There are cultural biases built into testing, and that was one of the motivations for the concept of affirmative action - to try to balance out those effects.

I got a message from one of my friends in Puerto Rico, who said, 'Sonia, there's nobody working in Puerto Rico - they're all glued to the television'. And I got a similar message from a friend in Spain.

I've spent my whole life learning how to do things that were hard for me.

There are no bystanders in life [...] Our humanity makes us each a part of something greater than ourselves.

In examining witnesses, I learned to ask general questions so as to elicit details with powerful sensory associations: the colors, the sounds, the smells that lodge an image in the mind and put the listener in the burning house.