Harvard honoured its W E B Du Bois medal winners at a ceremony yesterday.
Sotomayor, the first Latina to serve on the high court, said she was deeply honoured.
The Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research, which presents the medals, credited Sotomayor for speaking of her upbringing to inspire children trying to succeed in the face of adversity.
The center cited Spielberg's filmmaking and his establishment of a foundation to record oral histories of survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides.