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.
NO position should ever be for life. It’s ridiculous that we have 70/80/90 year olds running things forever until they die. They should retire and let the next generation take the reins. Age and term limits. Courts should not be able to be packed like this. Nothing should.
They should also probably be held to some ethical standards, but that’s too much for the nation’s most powerful court/justices. Nevermind the US code of conduct says justices are to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.
But who needs a functional government or justice system? It’s just keeping big business from making even more money, and destroying the planet faster.
I wonder why we don’t elect judges like we do at the local level. What were the founding fathers thought process on allowing the president to appoint them?
The thought was that if they had to campaign and run for elections they’d be too swayed by political pressure to be impartial. As we’ve seen, having the Executive branch do it doesn’t prevent this if politics becomes hyper-partisan. This is part of why Washington was opposed to political parties even existing. I think history has proven him right.
That is political as well.
Also, the fact that the reasoning behind this is because they don’t want the justices to be pressured by partisian issues is ironic considering…
I don’t see how anyone ever thought that a president appointing them would be bipartisan. Ironic indeed.
“Ok, we want to find the best legal minds in the country to serve on the Supreme Court in a fair manner without political bias. How do we select them?”
“Let’s put the selection in the hands of a politician!” (With confirmations also done by politicians)
“Brilliant!”
Though I guess that any other system put in place could be corrupted in some other way.
Australian High Court justices have an age limit.
I’ve long held that if a “life sentence” in prison is 20 years, then 20 years should be the lifetime term of a SC justice.
Limits on age and terms, as well as tests for competency and ethics, would also be great additions. It’s kind of amazing this isn’t already a thing.