In the week since Judge Sonia Sotomayor was nominated by President Obama to replace Justice David Souter on the United States Supreme Court, we’ve heard a lot of praises and critiques - here’s a bit more information for you to make the call:

Born as the eldest of two children in the South Bronx area of New York City, New York, on June 25, 1954. Her parents, Sonia and Celina (Baez) Sotomayor, were Puerto Rican immigrants who raised the family on a very modest income. Her mother was a nurse at a methadone clinic and her father was a tool-and-die worker who died when Sotomayor was only nine years old.

Sotomayor’s first leanings toward the justice system began after watching an episode of the television show Perry Mason. After a prosecutor on the program said he did not mind losing when a defendant turned out to be innocent. "I made the quantum leap: If that was the prosecutor’s job, then the guy who made the decision to dismiss the case was the judge," Sotomayor reflected later. "That was what I was going to be." Read more at biography.com.

That was the beginning of the story, here’s a bit of her professional experience:

• Prosecutor. She spent five years as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, working under legendary DA Robert Morgenthau and prosecuting robberies, assaults, murders, police brutality and child pornography cases. Private lawyer. She practiced for eight years at the law firm of Pavia & Harcourt representing primarily European clients like Ferrari and Fendi in intellectual property, commodities trading and similar business cases in the U.S. Judge. She was a U.S. district court judge in Manhattan for six years and has been on the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan since 1998. She is active in setting policy for the appellate court, serving, for example, as a member of the Second Circuit Task Force on Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness in the Courts.

• Confirmation veteran. She was nominated to the district court by the first President Bush and to the appeals court by President Clinton and has been through two, relatively uncontroversial confirmation hearings. The Senate delayed a vote on her appeals court nomination for over a year, because Republican senators did not want to enhance her chances of being appointed to the Supreme Court, according to a June 13, 1998, story in the New York Times. She was confirmed on October 3, 1998, by a 68 to 28 vote.

• Teacher. Lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School, teaching appellate and trial advocacy since 1999

Read more from WABC-TV in New York.

What do you think?  Is Sotomayor right for the job?  Why or why not?

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