Rising through the ranks of government and the legal system, Justice Rodriguez now sits on the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan – the second highest court in the state. There, he rules on some of the state’s most significant cases.

On his office wall – as it has been in all his previous offices – is a photo montage he made of his personal role models and heroes. Among them: Supreme Court Justices Marshall and Sotomayor and Nelson Mandela, alongside the flag of Rodriguez’s ancestral homeland, Puerto Rico. It hangs where he can see it from his desk. “I want to draw inspiration from it,” he says.