U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Monday she feels daily “frustration” as conservative justices move the country to the ideological right.
In an appearance at the University of California, Berkely School of Law, Sotomayor was asked how she copes with the consistently conservative rulings from the court.
“Every loss truly traumatizes me,” but “I get up the next morning,” she said in response to the question, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. The crowd — about 1,300 students — applauded.
In her remarks, she criticized her “originalist colleagues” whom she said have come up with “new ways to interpret the Constitution,” changing rulings “that some of us believed were well established,” the Chronicle reported.
The 6-3 conservative court has had an eventful couple of terms, making its mark on some of the most consequential aspects of everyday life — from overturning the federal right to an abortion to ruling affirmative action in colleges unconstitutional.
Not like she can do anything either. If she steps down now, Biden replaces her, demographics of the court stay the same.
All she can do is hang on until Thomas and Alito are replaced and hope that happens under a Democratic President
That will flip the court from 6-3 conservative to 5-4 liberal, but then the problem is the next 3 oldest justices are Sotomayor, Roberts and Kagen.
The truly frustrating thing about all of this is that the courts composition can be changed by acts of congress. The republicans pulled some massive bullshit to get this court. Biden could run with the campaign promise to unfuck the Supreme Court. This would be massively popular. Just add justices to rebalance the court. It can be done.
As much as I’d like that, the new justices would still need to get approved by congress. Unless we get 60 Dem senators, we’re stuck at 9 for the foreseeable future.
I don’t believe the filibuster applies to judicial nominees anymore.
It doesn’t, but an act to change the size of the court would have to go through the House and Senate and we don’t have the votes in either body for that right now.
Fun fact, the last time we changed the court size was to SHRINK it from 10 to 7 in order to deny President Johnson (no, the other one) a Supreme court pick.
After he got bounced and replaced by Grant, they increased it back to 9 where it has been ever since.
I wouldn’t be averse to something similar, shrink the court from 9 to 5, elimimate the 4 most recently added justices. Yeah, we’d lose Brown-Jackson, but that’s a small price to pay to get rid of Trump’s nominees.
The court would then split 2 conservative, 2 liberal with Roberts as the swing vote.
IIRC, most legal scholars believe that shrinking the court doesn’t get rid of existing justices as they are appointed for life. It simply prevents the appointment of new ones.
Seal Team Six and presidential immunity can take care of that.
It would be massively popular but I don’t see it galvanizing new voters. Anyone civically engaged enough to understand the fuckedness of the supreme court was already planning to vote Biden.
He doesn’t need new voters, he needs to energize his base which he seems intent on demoralizing with his Gaza bullshit.
He very much needs new voters. Anyway I’m not saying he shouldn’t do it, I’m saying it’s not a big vote getter.
It’s sad how true this is.
I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what is it with your username?
It is just a generated string of letters and characters.
Yeah that much is obvious. I’m just surprised you’re actually satisfied with it and using that name.
I don’t keep this account as a personal thing. It doesn’t matter to me as I’m not building relationships or anything so I’m happy with the minimal amount of effort I put into creating the name.
Fair enough, though it seems like going out in public wearing a clown outfit. If you like clowns you may be okay with it, but you’d still stand out when no one else is wearing a clown outfit.
Thanks for replying/explanation.
She could take out one of her colleagues. She’s right there in the room with them. They’d never see it coming.
Wait for the conservative justices to side with Trump and say that the president has absolute legal immunity
Hand Biden a gun
???
Profit.
Biden wouldn’t do anything because…
She would have to do it after the election or they’ll pull a repeat of Scalia/Garland.
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She’s a 69 year old type 1 diabetic…
You know what the average lifespan for a type 1 diabetic woman is?
68 years old…
She should have stepped down immediately and let Biden replace her. Instead if Biden keeps fucking up, trump could very likely get another.
She does have the very best healthcare in the country though…
True.
But stress is something that needs to be avoided to help increase lifespan with type 1 diabetes.
And she’s not shy about how she’s doing
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/sotomayor-says-surprised-by-supreme-court-pace-tougher-workload
Just like RBG, she’s taking it personal and thinking only her can “fight the good fight”.
She’s great and all, but we can find someone 30 years younger with a much lower risk of dying while Republicans have power.
This is bigger than any one person.
No, they can’t guarantee Sinema or Manchin so they don’t for sure have 51 votes to confirm. If Sotomayor leaves before there’s a guarantee she’ll get replaced with someone else on the left, the consequences could be very bad.
If she were more worried about the country than her own position she would have stepped down. And yes I know this throws shade on RBG. I’m still fucking angry she didn’t step down before it was too late. It’s not like she didn’t have plenty of warning. I judge the justices by their actions and it seems they don’t give enough of a shit. And now the rest of us pay the price.
With the benefit of hindsight, we know that even with Obama in office, the Republican Senate would have blocked a new appointment for RBGa seat after 2014. Perhaps it was naive of her to stay beyond the age of 80, but not many were calling for her to retire in 2014.
It really only became apparent how fucked the situation became when Merrick Garland’s nomination was blocked in 2016 and then especially when Trump was elected. Looking back, we can predict when the optimal time to retire would have been, but in the moment, it wasn’t so clear.