Justice Sotomayor warns about `arbitrary power' as she defends the rule of law
WASHINGTON − Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Friday stressed the importance of an independent judiciary and the rule of law, warning in comments at a law school about “arbitrary power.”
“Arbitrary power is just that, and it means that anyone is going to be subject to unfairness at someone else’s whim," she said during a conversation with students at Georgetown Law School. "You have to be worried about the day that will turn on you."
Sotomayor, the most senior of the court’s three liberal justices, did not mention any specific concern. And she has spoken out about in the past about life in a liberal court minority, noting that she cries after some cases.
But her comments came as President Donald Trump has called for impeaching a judge whose decision he disagreed with. That push evoked a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, raising tensions between Trump and the Supreme Court after a year in which it handed him a major victory with the presidential immunity ruling. Trump has also punished law firms whose lawyers have fought him in court.
Georgetown Law Dean William M. Treanor, who asked Sotomayor questions that students had submitted in advance, said students were most interested in the role of courts in safeguarding the rule of law.
Sotomayor said protecting the rule of law includes society abiding by standards she said are fundamental to existence.
“Right now, I understand there’s a lot of questions about what that means and what are our common norms,” she said. “But once we lose our common norms, we’ve lost the rule of law completely.”
Law schools and judges, she said, have to explain more than ever why judicial independence is critical to freedom.
“The fact that some of our public leaders are lawyers making statements challenging the rule of law, tells me that fundamentally our law schools are failing,” she said.
Vice President JD Vance, who – like Sotomayor – graduated from Yale Law school, has said judges aren’t allowed to control a president’s “legitimate power.”
Trump has called for the impeachment of a federal judge who tried to stop him from from deporting hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members without a hearing.
That elicited the unusual Roberts rebuke.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a public statement. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”