Sonia Sotomayor graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University and from Yale Law School. She worked as an assistant district attorney in New York and then at the law firm of Pavia & Harcourt. She served as a judge of the US District Court, Southern District of New York, from 1992 to 1998, and from 1998 to 2009 she served on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. In May 2009, President Barack Obama nominated her as an associate justice of the Supreme Court; she assumed this role on August 8, 2009.