(Art Lien)
When the Supreme Court took the bench this morning after its monthlong winter recess, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was sporting a hard cast on her right arm.
The Court’s Public Information Office said the Justice underwent a procedure early this month to address compressed nerves in the arm. She expects to have the cast removed later this month, the office said.
Justice Sotomayor kept her arm partially elevated and flexed her fingers from time to time. The cast did not prevent her from asking the first question and otherwise diving in during a lively argument in Kerry v. Din, a case about whether a U.S. consular officer’s refusal of a visa to the alien spouse of a U.S. citizen infringe any constitutional interests of the citizen.
Justice Sotomayor’s cast was covered in what appeared to be a black wrap of the sort orthopedists now offer their patients to decorate the typical drab, ivory color of plaster of paris hard casts.
(When your correspondent got his first-ever cast a few years ago, because of a broken wrist, he asked for a wrap to be applied in the color of his favorite hockey team. The nurse responded, “Sir, this is not a pediatric practice.”)
Justice Sotomayor’s black wrap matched her judicial robe. But come to think of it, the wrap may have been the deep blue of her beloved New York Yankees.
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