Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s path to the U.S. Supreme Court is being commemorated in yet another, quite colorful way: she is getting her own comic book.

Bluewater Productions has announced that its comic book bio of the Court’s newest justice hit comic stores in April. The book will be based on the justice’s life and ascension from a Bronx housing project to the nation’s highest court.

The book will be part of the publisher’s “Female Force” series. The company has bestowed the honor of a comic book upon other “forceful” females, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Lady Gaga.

It’s won’t be a snowy Christmas for Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

The Supreme Court’s newest juror is spending the holidays with her family in the balmy warmth of Puerto Rico.

Sotomayor hails from New York, but she was met with a warm welcome yesterday when she landed on the Caribbean island, where she’ll spend the holidays with family. (Both of her parents were born in Puerto Rico and moved to New York during World War II.)

According to the Associated Press, she told reporters at San Juan’s international airport, in Spanish: “My mother and I want to extend a warm embrace to our beloved island of Puerto Rico.”

She answered only one question: what she planned to do during her trip.

“I am going to eat mofongo,” Sotomayor said, referring to the plantain dish.

NBC is developing a television “dramedy” show whose main character will be based on SCOTUSblog founder and DC legal celeb Tom Goldstein, the ABA Journal reports.

The show, which has a working titled of Tommy Supreme, will follow a likeable character through a not-so-likeable profession – sort of like House in reverse, the website reports.

Goldstein, whose blog of Supreme Court news and analysis is a must-read for lawyers inside and outside of the Beltway, famously left a law firm as a fourth year associate to pursue Supreme Court practice working out of his home and offering to represent clients for free. He ultimately worked his way up to become a partner at Akin Gump and head of the firm’s Supreme Court practice.

Speaking to the Washingtonian‘s Capital Comment Blog, Goldstein said being the subject of an in-development television show was “both flattering and crazy.”

“My life isn’t the stuff of dramatic television, as I’ve experienced it,” he said.

UPDATE: As if to demonstrate why the network was so inspired by him, Goldstein has put out a video showing his comic side.

The O'Connors with President Bush in 2004

John J. O’Connor, III, husband of retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, has died of complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

O’Connor passed away this morning in Phoenix. He was diagnosed with the disease nearly two decades ago. Justice O’Connor cited the need to care for her ailing husband as one reason she decided to retire in 2005.

The couple met as law students at Stanford University, where the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist was also a student. John O’Connor went on to practice law in Phoenix for nearly a quarter century. After his wife was appointed to the Supreme Court, he practiced in Washington.

More here from the Associated Press.

The Sotomayor tour continues. The next stop? Yankee Stadium.

Justice Sonia Soyomayor is scheduled to throw out the first pitch Saturday right before her beloved New York Yankees play their rivals, the Boston Red Sox.

If you recall, the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry was brought up several times during Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy is a devoted Red Sox fan. He decided to support Sotomayor anyway.

(In the interest of full disclosure, DC Dicta is firmly with Leahy on this one. Go Sox!)

First the issue of West Virginia’s judicial elections process went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Now a former justice of the nation’s highest court is going all the way to West Virginia to take on the issue.

Retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor went to the mining state to urge a change in the way the judges on the state’s appellate court are selected. O’Connor, a vocal opponent of partisan judicial elections, urged state officials to follow the lead of her home state of Arizona in reforming the judicial process.

“It’s just been an excellent system,” she said of Arizona, where a commission now recommends judges to the governor for appointment. “I think we have as good a bench in the state today, as anywhere in the nation.”

O’Connor spoke at the second of three public hearings on potential changes to West Virginia’s judicial selection process, according to WVPB. That process was the subject of national attention when the U.S. Supreme Court took up the case this year in Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co., which involved a West Virginia appellate judge who cast the deciding vote overturning a $50 million verdict against a company.

The judge’s ruling came after the company’s CEO gave $3 million in direct and indirect contributions to the judge’s election campaign. That amount was more than half the total spent in the campaign.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court held that the judge’s failure to recuse himself violated the Due Process Clause.

Have Jennifer Lopez and her husband Marc Anthony become part of Washington’s elite?

It sure seems that way, the way they’ve been rubbing elbows with the powerful people from the nation’s capital recently.

We knew that the couple hosted a party at their New York home for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Now comes word that Anthony received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Congressional Hispanic Institute’s 32nd Annual Gala this week.

And who was on hand to fete the Latin singer at the event held at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center Wednesday night? None other than President Barack Obama, who made a little joke about Rep. Nydia Velasquez, the Institute’s chairwoman. “Nydia has a crush on you!” the president told Anthony as the crowd, including his wife, laughed. “I’m telling you, J.Lo, watch out!”

Sotomayor, who appears to be the couple’s new BFF, was seated next to them at the event.

Later that night the couple hit the rooftop lounge of the new W Hotel Washington to celebrate Anthony’s birthday with guests including Rep. Linda Sanchez.

Earlier in the week Lopez and Anthony had the ear of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Capitol Hill, discussing issues like education affordability.

The couple also paid a visit to the White House, bringing their toddler twins Max and Emme to meet the first family. “Max was tearing up the White House,” Anthony said.

Want to show your admiration for Supreme Court justices every time you send a letter or pay a bill? Well, you are in luck!

The U.S. Postal Service will issue 44-cent stamps featuring justices Joseph Story, Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, and William Brennan Jr. next week.

And to commemorate the stamps’ issue, a dedication ceremony will be held Tuesday at the Supreme Court featuring Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. and Postmaster General John E. Potter, according to CQ politics.

The National Law Journal’s Tony Mauro reports that Thurgood Marshall Jr., son of the justice, will also be in attendance. A stamp honoring his father was issued in 2003.

When DC Dicta read transcripts from Alberto Gonzales’s infamous Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, we didn’t hear music. But an undergrad at a Pennsylvania college apparently did – and she went on to write a concert opera based on the fallen attorney general’s testimony. And that show is now on stage in Philadelphia!

Every word sung in The Gonzales Cantata, playing at this year’s Philadelphia Fringe Festival, comes from the transcripts of the 2007 hearings that marked the beginning of the end for the Justice Department head, who was under fire for the alleged politically-motivated firings of U.S. attorneys and other issues. And since it’s a holiday weekend, and Philly is a quick car trip from Washington, perhaps some locals might consider checking it out.

More, including a Q&A with the show’s writer, here on The WSJ‘s Law Blog.

A federal challenge to a ban on gay marriage – designed to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court – will go to trial in California in January.

Yesterday, a judge set a Jan. 11 trial date in the lawsuit launched in May by power attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies challenging California’s Proposition 8. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said the expedited trial schedule was set because the case is “a matter of huge importance for the people of this state.”

The judge denied the requests of several gay rights organizations seeking to join the case as co-plaintiffs. Olson and Boies had opposed the request of the groups, which had initially opposed the lawsuit for fear that a loss would set a negative precedent that would be applied nationwide.

Olson, a staunch conservative and Federalist Society leader who served in the Justice Department under Presidents Reagan and Bush, explained in a New York Times piece yesterday why he chose to take on the battle. He said it was a civil rights issue. California’s gay marriage ban, he said, creates three classes: straight couples who can marry, same-sex couples who were allowed to marry for the brief time it was legal in the state, and other same-sex couples for whom marriage is not allowed.

“This case could involve the rights and happiness and equal treatment of millions of people,” Olson said.

“Why wouldn’t I take this case?” Olson said. “Because someone at the Federalist Society thinks I’d be making bad law? I wouldn’t be making bad law.”