SOTOMAYOR WAS APPROVED BY SENATE PANEL
The majority-Democrat Senate Judiciary Committee voted 13-6 to back 55-year-old Ms Sotomayor.
Her nomination will now go to the full Senate, where she is expected to be confirmed as the court's first Hispanic justice in a historic vote next week.
Her nomination has been vocally opposed by a chorus of Republicans who believe she is too liberal.
But correspondents say Ms Sotomayor is unlikely to alter the ideological balance on the court as she is set to replace retiring Justice David Souter, a liberal.
The Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the US Constitution, and its nine members are given lifetime appointments, though they can voluntarily resign or retire.
It is called upon to rule on issues that spark some of the greatest controversy in US society - such as abortion, gun rights and national security issues.
Judge Sotomayer is "well-qualified... she has administered justice without favouring one group of persons over another," said the committee chairman, Democrat Patrick Leahy, before casting his vote on Tuesday.
One Republican, Lindsey Graham, joined all 12 Democrats on the committee in approving Ms Sotomayor, who is President Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee.
'Inspiring'
"She's of good character... she was extremely well-qualified," said Senator Graham, according to Reuters news agency.
He noted that Ms Sotomayor was "left-of-centre but certainly in the mainstream".
Ms Sotomayor's supporters say she has a reliable record - and they cite her "inspiring" life story.
She was born to poor Puerto Rican parents on a New York public housing project, but rose to become a respected judicial scholar and judge.
The committee vote came after Ms Sotomayor and witnesses spent days testifying in front of the panel.
She responded cautiously to questions on some of the "hot-button issues" - prompting some members to complain that they were unable to gauge fully her stance on them.
Hispanic vote
Republicans claim Ms Sotomayer's record of speeches - and some rulings - shows she allows her opinion to affect her decisions.
"In speech after speech, year after year, Judge Sotomayor set forth a fully formed... judicial philosophy that conflicts with the great American tradition of blind justice and fidelity to the law as written," said Senator Jeff Sessions, the senior Republican on the committee.
The powerful National Rifle Association has come out against Ms Sotomayor over her record on gun rights, although some commentators suggest she has made few definitive statements on the issue.
Observers suggest other Republicans may give her nomination cautious support, aware of the growing power of the Hispanic vote.
Profile: Sonia Sotomayor
An impressive legal scholar, with years of experience on the US Appeals Court, she would always have been one of the front-runners to sit on the highest court in the US.
And, for liberals, her compelling life story has made her a virtually irresistible candidate to be the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
As she begins a series of high-profile confirmation hearings in the US Senate, experts agree that she is almost certain to be approved by senators and ascend to the court without any problems.
Born to Puerto Rican parents in the South Bronx in 1954, Ms Sotomayor grew up on a public housing estate.
She was diagnosed with diabetes when she was eight years old, and her father, a manual worker who did not speak English, died the next year.
Her mother, a nurse, brought her and her younger brother up on her own.
After completing her high school education at Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, she went to Princeton University, graduating summa cum laude in 1976, and winning the Pyne Prize, one of the highest awards given to undergraduates there.
She studied law at Yale Law School, where she was an editor of the Yale Law Review.
After college, she served as an Assistant District Attorney in New York County. In 1984, she left to enter private practice at the firm of Pavia & Harcourt, where she specialised in intellectual property law.
After seven years in the private sector, Ms Sotomayor was nominated to sit on the US District Court for the Southern District of New York by Republican President George H W Bush, becoming the youngest judge on the court, and the first Hispanic federal judge in the state.
It was while she was sitting on the District Court that she issued one of her more famous rulings: her injunction against Major League Baseball, preventing them from enforcing a new collective bargaining agreement, ended the 1994 baseball strike.
In 1997, she was elevated by Democratic President Bill Clinton to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, covering New York, Connecticut and Vermont.
She is widely regarded as a moderate - she received appointments from Democratic and Republican presidents, and her nomination to the Second Circuit was approved by a large majority in the Senate, including many Republicans.
Some conservatives - who fear the appointment of "activist" judges to the Supreme Court - may object to a remark she made in 2005 at a panel at Duke University that "policy is made" in the courts.
After her nomination was announced, attention was focused on a decision she co-authored in a case involving firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut.
A group of white firefighters had sued city authorities after they were passed over for promotion because the officials had thrown out the results of an exam in which black firefighters had done disproportionately badly.
Ms Sotomayor and her fellow Appeals Court judges ruled that the city authorities had been justified in their actions, because they would have been liable for lawsuits on grounds of racial discrimination if the test results had been accepted.
The decision was overturned, however, when the US Supreme Court looked at the case in June 2009.
Ms Sotomayor is likely to face questions in her Senate confirmation hearings on the ruling, as well as her comment, made in 2001, that she "would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
But with a large Democratic majority in the Senate, and with a number of Republicans who approved her elevation to the Second District still in the Senate, her confirmation is likely to be smooth.
And liberals will be able to welcome a woman whose biography embodies the American Dream onto the Supreme Court.
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