U.S. Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett revealed on Tuesday the norms that justices follow to accommodate differing viewpoints and ensure they work without conflict.
“The chief justice begins because he’s the most senior and you go around in a circle, most senior down to most junior, and you say what you think about the case. And the norm is that you cannot interrupt the other person. So, we hear everybody out and it’s not until everybody has spoken that there then can be some back and forth.”
She said interrupting someone or raising voices would be a major violation of the norms.
“Even if inside you’re frustrated or hot under the collar, you don’t express that in the conference room, which makes it easier when you go back to your chambers and then go to meet at lunch.”
Justice Barrett called the Supreme Court “an arranged marriage with no opportunity for divorce.” The Supreme Court justices “didn’t choose one another as colleagues. … We’re not going anywhere. So we have to get along,” she said.
Eric Liu, host of the conversation and the chief executive of Citizens University, called the norms described by Justice Barrett “the rules of a really good preschool.”
The rule that each justice will hear each other out is “terrifically important” as it enables people to hear opposing sides, knowing they will get a chance to put their case forward, Justice Sotomayor said. However, “occasionally someone might come close to something that could be viewed as hurtful.”
In such scenarios, “generally one of our senior colleagues will call the person who was perceived to maybe have gotten a little close and tell them—’maybe you should think of an apology or patching it up a little bit.' And that does happen. It happens in writing. Occasionally someone writes something that an individual feels is offensive, not just explanatory of a view, but personally offensive to them, or could be perceived by others as offensive. And there is dialogue around that, an attempt to find a different word or a different expression.”
Accommodating Opinions
Justice Barrett pointed out that there was a lot of “give and take” that goes behind creating the justices’ opinions on any case. A “very strong norm” of the court is trying to accommodate each justice’s views when drafting opinions.“One thing that’s different about our work and the work of a legislature is that there’s kind of a line beyond which we can’t compromise. You know, we wouldn’t vote-trade. Justice Sotomayor and I both take an oath to uphold the Constitution and our job is to say what we think the right answer is to the best of our ability,” she said.
“So, neither of us can compromise on that on the bottom line, but there’s a lot that we can compromise on and how we write opinions. You know, you have the ability to write an opinion more broadly or more narrowly. Not everything has to be decided in an opinion.”
The Supreme Court is simultaneously the “most transparent” and “confidential” branch of the government, Justice Barrett noted. It is transparent because the public knows “exactly why” the court reaches the decisions it has made.
“But then also we keep a great deal confidential and I think that gives us the room to be able to deliberate and talk and think. It’s not a rowdy, it’s not like the floor of parliament, certainly. But we work very hard to maintain those norms and I think we are successful,” Justice Barrett stated.
Supreme Court Disagreement
The conversation between Justices Sotomayor and Barrett came following a recent Supreme Court decision on President Trump’s eligibility to run for president.The decision overturned a state court ruling that prohibited President Trump from being listed on Colorado’s ballot for the 2024 presidential primary. The Colorado Supreme Court barred President Trump under the 14th Amendment’s Section 3 “insurrection clause” for his alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach incident.
Although all nine justices agreed to toss the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling, a 5–4 majority also found that “nothing in the Constitution delegates to the States any power to enforce Section 3 against federal officeholders and candidates,” according to the majority opinion.
Three Democrat-appointed justices, including Ms. Sotomayor, insisted that the majority opinion went too far, saying that the ruling “shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement” and that “we cannot join an opinion that decides momentous and difficult issues unnecessarily.”
“Although we agree that Colorado cannot enforce Section 3, we protest the majority’s effort to use this case to define the limits of federal enforcement of that provision,” they wrote.
In her opinion, Justice Barrett said that the stance of the Democrat-appointed justices was not appropriate in the current environment.
“In my judgment, this is not the time to amplify disagreement with stridency … particularly in this circumstance, writings on the Court should turn the national temperature down, not up,” she wrote.
“For present purposes, our differences are far less important than our unanimity: All nine Justices agree on the outcome of this case. That is the message Americans should take home.”
