As Judge Sonia Sotomayor endures her grueling U.S. Senate confirmation hearing today, GalleyCat only has one question: What did Nancy Drew teach this future Supreme Court justice?

Sotomayor once explained that her mother invested in Nancy Drew detective novels after seeing how much her daughter enjoyed reading them: "I was enamored with them. I had like two shelves of them before I turned to other reading," she said, according to a recent Seattle Times essay by critic Misha Berson about the Supreme Court Justice and the teenage detective. The revelation generated a stream of teen detective trend pieces and headlines for Papercutz's Nancy Drew graphic novel series.

Here's more from the essay: "Nancy showed us how a steel-trap mind and acute instincts are valuable, complementary tools for a girl with a big job to do. Some critics of Sotomayor's candidacy worry that she may rely too much on empathy and intuition in Supreme Court deliberations. But, hey--it worked for Nancy!"