Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she lives in perpetual frustration as her conservative colleagues rule on landmark cases that have reshaped the nation in recent years.
“Every loss truly traumatizes me, in my stomach and in my heart,” the justice told a crowd of students at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law on Monday. “But I have to get up the next morning and keep on fighting.”
Sotomayor, who has served on the court since her appointment by President Barack Obama in 2009, has issued a string of scathing dissents in recent years after former President Donald Trump reshaped the court’s idealogical makeup. The bench’s 6-3 conservative majority has since ended the protections under Roe v. Wade, which codified Americans’ access to abortion, and recently cleared the way for the first-ever execution of an inmate on death row with nitrogen gas.
“Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before,” Sotomayor wrote of the impending execution of Kenneth Smith, adding the “world is watching”
On Monday, the justice said she battled against the fallout from her colleagues’ rulings, but added “change never happens on its own.”
“How can you look at those people and say that you’re entitled to despair? You’re not. I’m not,” she said after being asked about how students view the makeup of the court. “Change happens because people care about moving the arc of the universe toward justice, and it can take time and it can take frustration.”
“I’m really writing for the future, and probably for a different culture,” she added of her dissents.
Still, Sotomayor said she was able to find camaraderie with her conservative colleagues. She said fellow Justice Clarence Thomas was the only member who “knows the name of every employee on the Supreme Court” and that she’s able to have “very civil” conversations with him.”
“Even though I have very passionate disagreements [with his opinions],” she added. “That’s how I lower the temperature.”