By a 68 to 31 vote, the Senate has confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the country’s newest Supreme Court Justice–putting a fan of the televised adventures of Perry Mason on the nation’s highest court.
Sadly, most of the articles about Sotomayor’s love for Mason focus on television episodes, rather than the work of author Erle Stanley Gardner, the Ventura, California civil rights lawyer turned pulp fiction scribe who created the series. This year the U.K. publisher House of Stratus resurrected a number of his books, including “The Case Of The Restless Redhead.” Amazon.com doesn’t list any recent American reprints of Gardner’s massive output, but perhaps the confirmation hearings will stoke readers’ interest.
Here’s more about the Sotomayor and Mason, via the NY Times: “Once sworn in, Justice Sotomayor will be the first Hispanic named to the court. And perhaps its biggest fan of the old Perry Mason shows. Fitting then that Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, was presiding over the Senate’s vote at one point today, since he and the judge shared their fond memories of the series during her hearings.”