Reply #4: Looking around more, it appeas Cabranes was, as I began to suspect,

[No Elephants]

pivotal in Sotomayor's career. http://news.muckety.com/2009/06/23/jose-cabranes-was-an-early-mentor-to-sonia-sotomayor/17071

Also turns out that he was a founding member of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund and the chair of the board in 1980, when he "referred" Sotomayor to the Fund.

Cabranes was also very well-connected in NY, thanks in part to his parents and to his own formidable resume. Supposedly, he was on Clinton's short list for the SCOTUS nomination twice, being edged out by Ginsburg and Breyer. (Surprising. I would have thought that Clinton would have loved to have appointed the first Hispanic Justice. I assume that there must be a strong reason why Cabranes did not make the cut.)

The woman whom Cabranes married in 1984 was the first witness on behalf of Sotomayor at her confirmation hearings. She is also an intelligent woman but Cabranes seems to have used his connections with Yale on her behalf, too, because she was about to become an associate professor there when they married and she was at one point later, acting dean.

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/16/style/jose-cabranes-and-kate-pressman-wed.html