In the 1920s and 1930s, a group of scholars known as the legal realists shocked the legal and academic worlds. They were theorists, social scientists, and practicing lawyers. They questioned a number of orthodoxies about the place of law in American society, with rhetoric that was equal parts inspiring, engaging, and troubling. They sought to improve the ability of law to serve justice through a compelling set of research agendas. Their work triggered a series of spirited debates about law and public policy which continue to the present day. Echoes of legal realism, with its attempts to shatter myths and reshape the practice and theory of law, continue to be heard in the halls of law schools and judicial chambers, and even in the houses of Congress. Indeed, during the summer of 2009 the Senate confirmation hearings of Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor mesmerized the American public and brought national attention to legal realism. No one questioned the impressiveness of Sotomayor’s credentials. When President Barack Obama announced her nomination, he emphasized a pedigree that included degrees from Princeton and Yale Law School, and her experience as a Manhattan prosecutor and federal judge. In addition, he told an American story about the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants who struggled to ensure that their daughter “faced down barriers, [overcame] the odds, and lived out the American dream that brought her parents here so long ago.”1 The President painted an elaborate picture of Sotomayor’s love of the community that raised her, her struggle with diabetes, her intervention to end a baseball strike in 1995, and her childhood love of Nancy Drew novels. While her credentials provided ample professional justification for her nomination, the story of Sotomayor as judicial Horatio Alger provided persuasive biographical justification. As is the case with any contemporary nominee to the court