Among the many debates to occur since it became clear that federal appellate court judge Sonia Sotomayor was on President Barack Obama's short list to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter is the question will she be the court's first Hispanic?

Those who say "no" point to Justice Benjamin Nathan Cardozo who served on the court from 1932 to 1938. Cardozo hailed from a Sephardic Jewish family thought to have Portuguese roots. Since Portugal is on the Iberian peninsula some argue that Portuguese are Hispanics and thus Cardozo is of Latino ancestry.

As Cardozo's biographer, Harvard Law professor Andrew Kaufman, wrote to Ashby Jones of the WSJ.com's law blog in response to a question, there's no documentation the Cardozos came from Portugal though there's circumstantial evidence that may have been the case.

The Cardozos and the Nathans [Cardozo's maternal ancestors] came to the American colonies in the eighteenth century via Holland and England. The family legend is that the Cardozos came from Portugal but there is no firm documentation about the particulars. The family tree is filled with names like Seixas, Mendes, Gomez, Riveiro, Navarro, Peixotto, and Pachecho, indicating their heritage as Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula.

 

I have had many long conversations with a variety of newspaper people about whether Cardozo was the first whatever-name-you-want-to-use. It's all in the context. Many Spanish would deny that Portuguese are Hispanic. Many Jews do not regard themselves as ethnically part of the European country they came from. Many Sephardic Jews probably do regard themselves as ethnically Spanish and Portuguese and Cardozo's synagogue was and still is known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. Many Spanish and Portuguese probably did not regard Jews as part of their culture, and I can understand that many Americans of Mexican heritage would not so regard Cardozo.

By the way, a number of years ago the Portuguese consul in Boston enlisted my help in trying to get Cardozo on an American stamp as part of a Portuguese-American celebration. And more by the way, just last week, I was the speaker at the farewell dinner for the current Portuguese consul in Boston. She suffered an attack of migraine in a bookstore and when she opened her eyes, she found herself staring at a book called Cardozo, recognized it as a Portuguese name, and asked me to speak. The name Cardozo still resonates for Portuguese.

But even if it could be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Cardozos came from Portugal, that would not make them Hispanic in the eyes of the Census Bureau.

The bureau's demographers include includes Spaniards as Hispanics it doesn't count those of Portuguese descent. in those statistics.

"The federal government defines Hispanic or Latino as a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin regardless of race. Thus, Hispanics may be any race. The terms "Hispanic" and "Latino" are used by the U.S. Census Bureau; hereinafter in this report, the term "Hispanic" is used to refer to all individuals who reported they were Hispanic or Latino."

Further, from this Portuguese-American website, it would appear many people of Portuguese descent don't consider themselves Hispanic and some are even offended when they're placed in that category.

Meanwhile, Merriam-Webster gives this definition:

Hispanic
Pronunciation: \hi-spa-nik\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Latin hispanicus, from Hispania Iberian Peninsula, Spain
Date: 1584
1: of or relating to the people, speech, or culture of Spain or of Spain and Portugal
2: of, relating to, or being a person of Latin American descent living in the United States ; especially : one of Cuban, Mexican, or Puerto Rican origin.

So it seems safe to say Sotomayor will be the court's first Hispanic though we don't expect this debate to end just because we'd like it to.