A Supreme Court justice offered a blunt assessment of her own court’s recent work this weekend, and she suggested she wasn’t kidding.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she hopes the high court will “take back some of the crazy things that it’s done,” Politico reported Saturday. The Obama appointee quickly added that she was only joking before reversing herself with “maybe not.”
She made the remarks during an hourlong appearance at George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate in Virginia, where a conference was examining the past and future of American democracy. Sotomayor told the audience the country is going through a “rough patch” on the rule of law and civic discourse.
“I think we’re in a rough patch right now. There’s so many challenges to it on so many different levels. This is a really critical point in our history,” she said.
Sotomayor singled out one ruling she would like to see reversed, which was the 2024 decision holding that President Donald Trump could not be prosecuted for many acts tied to his official duties. She and the court’s two other liberal justices dissented.
“There are some opinions that I hope in my lifetime will get overturned. The immunity case is one of them,” she said.
She also said she feels for teachers, especially those covering constitutional law, given what she called “systemic changes in my court’s jurisprudence.”
Sotomayor suggested lawmakers may need to step in to restore eroded norms, though she offered no specifics.
“We will come out of this changed and there are some norms that we may have lost forever, but I don’t think we will fail as a democracy,” she said.
She also blamed a breakdown in civility for weakening civic life. “That someone disagrees with you doesn’t make them a bad person, and that’s something we’ve forgotten,” she said.
Sotomayor steered clear of commenting directly on this week’s midterm results but called Tuesday’s “outpouring of voters” an encouraging sign. Turnout landed near 49 percent, a level topped in modern midterms only in 2018, according to Politico.
Still, she voiced confidence the country will recover. “I’m hoping it’s…in my lifetime. But even if it’s not in my lifetime, I genuinely believe it will happen,” she said.
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