Legal Beat

According to Maine Republican Susan Collins, Sonia Sotomayor's favorite Supreme Court justice is Benjamin Cardozo.

Collins posed the trivia question to Sotomayor during a private meeting today on Capitol Hill. Cardozo was nominated to the court by President Herbert Hoover. He served on the court from 1932 to 1938. Collins declined to say why Cardozo is Sotomayor's favorite.

Also today, the administration turned in Sotomayor's responses to the Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.

Sotomayor told the committee that she was first contacted on April 27 by White House counsel Gregory Craig "with respect to the possibility of a future Supreme Court vacancy." NPR's Nina Totenberg broke the news on April 30 that Justice David H. Souter planned to retire from the court.