Justice Sotomayor’s Optimism For The Rule of Law Under Trump Only Lasted A Month

Last month, Justice Sonia Sotomayor was pretty confident in the soft power that courts would be able to deploy as a check against the Trump administration. Things might look bad right now, but it’s not like the administration would just openly defy court orders, right? As it turns out, yes, that imminently predictable set of circumstances has come to be. And as cathartic as it might feel to go on a “we told you so” or wallowing tirade, the right thing to do would be updating our read on the zeitgeist and acting accordingly. Thankfully, Sotomayor is leaning in to the right response. During an event held at the school that gave the biggest (religious) middle finger to Trump’s administration so far, Sotomayor updated the audience on her faith in the rule of law being the thing that keeps us afloat in these troubling waters. From CNN:

“One of the things that’s troubling so many right now is many of the standards that are being changed … were norms that governed officials into what was right and wrong,” Sotomayor told an audience at Georgetown University.

“Once norms are broken then you’re shaking some of the foundation of the rule of law,” she added.

Unexpectedly, she placed some of the fault on law schools:

“The fact that some of our public leaders are lawyers advocating or making statements challenging the rule of law tells me that fundamentally our law schools are failing,” she said.

This is not the time to sneak diss, Sotomayor; name names! I jest — I understand why a mind toward avoiding the appearance of impropriety would avoid naming names. That said, I’m not bound by that expectation and, even if this wasn’t who she had in mind when she said it, it’s hard to deny that the boot would fit on JD Vance.

Let it be known, I am a firm believer in the fact that it is always morally good to punch up at Yale Law. But I wouldn’t blame Yale for Vance’s public shortcomings any more than I would blame the Pope for Vance not understanding Jesus’s message. Three reasons. First, the Pope already directly addressed Vance’s bad religion. Second, some of Vance’s most mind-boggling claims — the Judiciary having no authority to regulate the Executive’s “legitimate” powers for example — may stem from Yale doing a good job at educating one of its students. Granted the justification would be Unitary Executive Theory, a fringe assessment of constitutional authority coming out of Yale, but you can’t really fault school for teaching fringe theory when all should be fair game in the marketplace of ideas. And third, barring the UET explanation above, Yale isn’t to blame if Vance is a gutless power addict who was willing to call Trump idiot Hitler at one point and be his right hand man the next.

Blaming law school aside, she made the argument that once we lose our legal norms, we lose the rule of law completely. As sad as it is to see the optimistic glow drain from a top jurist’s eyes, we need levelheaded judges who are acutely aware of the gravitas that their decisions hold, especially when they’re sitting at the Supreme Court.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor Says She’s Worried About Declining Standards And Broken Norms [CNN]

Earlier: Sonia Sotomayor Wildly Out Of Touch With Trump’s America

Trump White House Tests Supreme Court Loyalty With Increasingly Crackpot Legal Arguments

Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

The post Justice Sotomayor’s Optimism For The Rule of Law Under Trump Only Lasted A Month appeared first on Above the Law.