Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who could become the first Hispanic to sit on the US Supreme Court, worked her way from the gritty reality of low-income New York City housing to a polished federal courtroom. Sotomayor, 55, would join Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to be the second woman now serving on the court -- if the US Senate confirms her nomination after beginning debate on the floor of the chamber Tuesday. She has already survived a confirmation battle in July with the key Senate Judiciary committee, which voted 13-6 to approve Sotomayor on July 28, sending her nomination to the full Senate for consideration. Former justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the court, retired in 2005 to care for her ailing husband. Sotomayor's remarkable rise in some ways mirrors that of President Barack Obama, who nominated her to fill the vacancy left by retiring Justice David Souter on the nine-member court -- the final arbiter of the US Constitution that confronts some of the most contentious disputes in politics and society. During nomination hearings, Republicans charged that Sotomayor had insufficiently dispelled their worries that her personal views, not the law, would guide her future decisions on issues like gun rights and racial preferences. But she won the support of Senator Lindsey Graham, the only committee Republican who voted for Sotomayor. 'This is the first Latina woman in the history of the United States to be selected for the Supreme Court. Now that is a big deal,' he said when voting in favor of her nomination in July. Obama's Democratic allies said that Sotomayor's 17-year record on the bench showed her to be a careful and fair judge guided by precedent. The president has made clear he is counting on her unique perspective, especially her grasp of 'how ordinary people live' as mirrored by her own compelling rags-to-riches life story, as well as her legal experience. Sotomayor's Puerto Rican-born father died when she was nine, and her mother, a registered nurse also born in Puerto Rico, raised the future judge and her brother in low-income housing in the Bronx borough of New York City. As a child, she wanted to be a police detective, but those hopes were dashed when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes at the age of eight, prompting her to pursue a career in law. Sotomayor won scholarships first to Princeton University, where she graduated summa cum laude and then Yale Law School, where she served as an editor of the university's prestigious Law Review. After graduating, she worked for a few years as a New York prosecutor, before joining a private business law practice. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush named her a district judge, and his successor in the White House, President Bill Clinton, named her to the circuit court in 1997, which she reached in a 67-29 Senate confirmation vote in 1998. Divorced, with no children and a reputation as a workaholic, Sotomayor often speaks of the courts as 'the last refuge for the oppressed.' Over four days of Senate hearings in July, Sotomayor fought back against charges of racial bias, professing 'fidelity to the law' as her highest virtue as she disavowed a past comment that a 'wise Latina' might be a better judge than a white male. The nominee said she knew the weight of being a role model to women, Latinas, immigrants and others over a lifetime of barrier-breaking achievements. 'My career as a judge has shown me that, regardless of what my desires were, that my life, what I have accomplished, does serve as an inspiration for others,' she said. 'It's a sort of awesome sense of responsibility.' Over nearly two decades as a judge, Sotomayor played a key role in prominent cases -- including ruling against baseball team owners in a case that ended the 1994 strike, and upholding a prison sentence in a high-profile police brutality case. For more than a decade, Sotomayor has been mentioned by Democrats as a possible future Supreme Court appointment. But she has been in the sights of Republicans who see her as a proponent of 'hard-left' values, and have targeted her rulings as inimical to conservative causes. Other critics have decried her demeanor as too temperamental and excitable. Sotomayor's backers, however, are equally ardent. Latino leaders have also lined up behind her. 