U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the conservative majority on the Court is overturning so many longstanding precedents so quickly that public confidence in it is flagging.
The justice received a medal from the school for public service.
Court approval has been underwater since September 2021 when it was 40 percent to 53 percent. President Donald Trump’s third conservative appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, joined the Court in October 2020.
President Joe Biden’s sole appointee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was sworn in in June 2022.
Since Trump’s first term began, the Court reversed Roe v. Wade, finding there was no constitutional right to abortion, ended affirmative action in the college admission process, and upheld broad immunity for presidents for official acts.
Sotomayor did not identify specific precedents but said the public becomes wary when the Court “moves too quickly in upheavals.”
“I think that creates instability in the society, in people’s perception of law and people’s perception of whether we’re doing things because of legal analysis or because of partisan views,” said the justice who took office in August 2009 after being nominated by President Barack Obama.
“Whether those views are accurate or not, I don’t accuse my colleagues of being partisan.”
Sotomayor said her colleagues “genuinely have a belief in a certain way of looking at the Constitution.”
“And I understand, in good faith, that they think that that belief better promotes our democracy,” the justice said.
“But whether that’s true or not is irrelevant if people are feeling insecure in the changes that they’re instituting at a pace that they can’t absorb.
“If we continue going in directions that the public is going to find hard to understand, we’re placing the Court at risk,” she said. “So I think we have to proceed slowly in overturning precedent.”
The decision narrowed the range of criminal charges against Trump arising out of the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol and for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
“If we as a Court go so much further ahead of people, our legitimacy is going to be questioned,” she said at the law school event.
“I think the immunity case is one of those situations. I don’t think that Americans have accepted that anyone should be above the law in America. Our equality as people was the foundation of our society and of our Constitution.”
The majority’s opinion would insulate a president from criminal prosecution for accepting a bribe for a pardon, ordering the assassination of a political adversary, or carrying out a military coup to cling to power, she wrote.
“The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law,” the justice wrote.
Sotomayor told the law school audience that the U.S. Constitution “has provisions not exempting the president from criminal activity after an impeachment, so I had a hard time with the immunity case.”
The justice said she enjoys being a part of history at the Court and that “being a voice, even when I lose, has meaning.”
“Speaking what I see as what the law requires is important,” Sotomayor said.
“It needs to be articulated. It needs to be heard by the others, even if they don’t agree with me.”
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the public information office at the Supreme Court. No reply was received by publication time.
