 The nomination of Sonia Sotomayor , widely described in media accounts as the first Hispanic nominee , drew more attention to the question of Cardozo 's ethnicity . Cardozo biographer Andrew Kaufman questioned the usage of the term " hispanic " during Cardozo 's lifetime , commenting : " Well , I think he regarded himself as Sephardic Jew whose ancestors came from the Iberian Peninsula . " However , " no one has ever firmly established that the family 's roots were , in fact , in Portugal " . It has also been asserted that Cardozo himself " confessed in 1937 that his family preserved neither the Spanish language nor Iberian cultural traditions " . By contrast , Cardozo made his own translations of authoritative legal works written in French and German . 
