Editing Perry Mason (section)

==Influence==
In her [[Sonia Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination|confirmation hearings]] before the [[Senate Judiciary Committee]] in July 2009, [[Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court]] nominee [[Sonia Sotomayor]] prefaced her remarks on the role of the prosecutor by saying that she was inspired by watching the ''Perry Mason'' television series as a child:

<blockquote>I was influenced so greatly by a television show in igniting the passion that I had as being a prosecutor, and it was ''Perry Mason'' … In one of the episodes, at the end of the episode … Perry said to the prosecutor, "It must cause you some pain having expended all that effort in your case to have the charges dismissed." And the prosecutor looked up and said, "No. My job as a prosecutor is do justice and justice is served when a guilty man is convicted and when an innocent man is not." And I thought to myself that's quite amazing to be able to serve that role …<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-111shrg56940/html/CHRG-111shrg56940.htm |title=Confirmation Hearing on the Nomination of Hon. Sonia Sotomayor, to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States |date=July 13–16, 2009 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |access-date=2015-07-07}}</ref></blockquote>

The Perry Mason novels inspired [[Robert M. Bell]], former Chief Judge of the [[Maryland Court of Appeals]], to become a lawyer. "I used to read those growing up," he recalled in 2012. "I got the sense that a lawyer could do good things for folk and was important to our community. That’s what I wanted to do."<ref>{{cite news |last=Smith |first=Sam |date=October 2, 2012 |title=Chief judge recalls a court career that started with his arrest |url=http://baltimorepostexaminer.com/chief-judge-recalls-a-court-career-that-started-with-his-arrest/2012/10/02 |newspaper=Baltimore Post-Examiner |access-date=2015-07-07 }}</ref>