Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor told Suffolk University Law School students that the law “is uncertain and responds to changing circumstances” in a 1996 lecture that was adapted for an article in the Suffolk University Law Review.

The article, “Returning Majesty to the Law and Politics: A Modern Approach,” gives a glimpse of federal appeals judge Sotomayor’s judicial temperament.

“What is correct is often difficult to discern when the law is attempting to balance competing interests and principles, such as the need to protect society from drugs as opposed to the need to enforce our constitutional right to be free from illegal searches and seizures,” she wrote in the article, coauthored with Nicole A. Gordon.

The article has been cited by the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times and in other media analysis of the Sotomayor nomination.