Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor’s staff prodded colleges and libraries to buy her books

For colleges and libraries seeking a boldfaced name for a guest lecturer, few come bigger than Sonia Sotomayor, the Supreme Court justice who rose from poverty in the Bronx to the nation’s highest court.

She has benefited, too — from schools’ purchases of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of the books she has written over the years.

Sotomayor’s staff has often prodded public institutions that have hosted the justice to buy her memoir or children’s books, works that have earned her at least $3.7 million since she joined the court in 2009. Details of...