Liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has acknowledged that she sometimes sheds tears after losing a major case before a conservative-led panel.
“There were days when I came to my office after the case was announced, closed the door and cried.” The Bronx-born legal scholar recalls The event took place last week at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
“We’ve had days like that, and there will be more,” she said.
Sotomayor, one of the Supreme Court’s three liberal justices, spoke Friday at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study where she was awarded the Radcliffe Medal.
She did not specify which incident in particular brought her to tears, but stressed the need to keep fighting, even in moments of despair.
“There are moments of very, very sadness,” she said, “and yes, even I have moments of despair. We all do. But you have to accept it. You have to shed the tears. And you have to wipe them away and get up and fight some more.”
The 69-year-old judge has previously said he has been deeply dissatisfied with the Supreme Court since former President Donald Trump appointed three conservative justices that shifted it to the right.
She echoed similar sentiments while speaking at the University of California, Berkeley Law School in January, saying, “Every loss really hurts my mind and my body.”
“But you have to wake up the next morning and keep fighting,” she said at the time.
During her January remarks, Justice Sotomayor also spoke about the demanding workload faced by justices on the nation’s highest court.
“Cases are getting bigger and more demanding. The number of amici [participating parties] The emergency calendar has become so much busier and I’m exhausted,” she said at the time. According to Bloomberg Law.
“There used to be a lot of summer breaks, but that’s not the case anymore. The emergency calendar is busy almost every week,” the judge said.
Sotomayor has been under pressure from progressives to step down to allow President Biden to nominate a liberal replacement. expressed concern Ms. Sotomayor was asked about her health and age – she is diabetic and has had to be accompanied by a doctor in the past.
Those arguing for her retirement have been troubled by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died as a judge in 2020, allowing President Trump to nominate her replacement and fill a conservative seat on the bench.
Justice Sotomayor’s comments last week came as the Supreme Court is considering a number of high-profile cases this term, including two about abortion and President Trump’s assertion of prosecutorial immunity.
On Thursday, she was again in the minority in a key South Carolina redistricting case, but the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of Republicans, ruling that legitimate partisan purposes, not racial motives, drove the redistricting process.
Sotomayor was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama in 2009. She is the first Latina and only the third woman to serve on the bench.
