All posts tagged "sonia sotomayor"

The Supreme Court's internal disagreements have spilled out into a public display, according to a report profiling the ongoing tensions.

The Supreme Court has experienced significant internal friction in recent weeks, marked by heated disputes between liberal and conservative justices. Justice Sonia Sotomayor has publicly criticized Justice Brett Kavanaugh over his handling of immigration cases and civil rights protections. Sotomayor condemned Kavanaugh's concurrence supporting immigration stops based on ethnicity and language, calling his reasoning insufficient.

Sotomayor would later apologize publicly to Kavanaugh, whose office did not issue a response to the initial criticism or apology to follow. Analysis from Wall Street Journal columnist James Romoser reads, "As the Supreme Court barrels toward the final stretch of a politically explosive term, its private tensions are surfacing in public.

"A series of blunt remarks by three justices in recent days has offered a glimpse into strained personal relationships, ideological divides and internal alarm over how the court is making key decisions.

"Such candid airing of friction is unusual at the court, where personal discord is normally kept behind closed doors and legal disagreements are rendered in the formal language of written dissents.

"The remarks all come as the court is under pressure both from its caseload and from President Trump, who has frequently disparaged the justices in recent weeks."

Despite the frayed internal relationship for the Supreme Court, there is a sense that the judicial body will still prove to be a problem for Donald Trump.

The New York Times's Ross Douthat said, "So, most likely there’ll be some victories for Trump, but there’ll be two really large defeats — birthright citizenship and tariffs. Both are very big issues. Birthright citizenship is more important to the Republican base or the conservative base. Tariffs are obviously close to Trump’s own heart.

"A year ago there was a lot of conversation, including on this show, about what it would take for Trump to defy the court. In practice, you’ve had a sequence of setbacks for the president that have been met by angry tirades on social media. Some attempts to do end-arounds. But basically, Trump has accepted the power of the court to block him."

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor leveled serious criticism at fellow Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his "Kavanaugh stops," Slate legal experts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explained on Friday.

The race-based detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection that Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority approved last year give federal immigration agents permission to detain Latinos based, in part, on their "apparent ethnicity."

Sotomayor had a stern comment for Kavanaugh: "I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops. This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn't really know any person who works by the hour."

"Justice Sotomayor usually goes out of her way to compliment her colleagues when she does these talks, including those on the right. She focuses on collegiality and how they all respect each other," Lithwick said. "She’s made headlines for lavishing praise on Clarence Thomas in the past. So why did she aim this dagger at Kavanaugh?"

Mark Joseph Stern described why Sotomayor's blunt response was significant.

"Well, I think this was almost certainly intentional and preplanned," Stern said. "When Justice Sotomayor does these public events, she generally seems to plant questions with her interlocutor that will allow her to make a statement. She knows she’s going to make news. So no one should think this was just Sotomayor riffing off the cuff. I believe it’s something she wanted both us and Kavanaugh to hear."

A Supreme Court Justice has criticized a colleague appointed by Donald Trump for failing to grasp the severity of the administration's immigration policy.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor hit out at her colleague, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, during an event yesterday (April 7). Sotomayor, appointed in 2009 by President Barack Obama, criticized the September 8 emergency order which meant lower court rulings were to be paused indefinitely.

This means immigration agents have a wider scope for profiling people and are free to target them based on their language, occupation, race, or presence at specific locations like bus stops, Bloomberg Law reported. Sotomayor referenced a piece by Kavanaugh while delivering a speech at the University of Kansas School of Law.

She said, "I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops. This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour."

Sotomayor went on to claim that even short-term detentions can affect those wrongly arrested by immigration agents. "Those hours that they took you away, nobody’s paying that person," she said. "And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper."

"Life experiences teach you to think more broadly and to see things others may not. And when I have a moment where I can express that on behalf of people who have no other voice, then I’m being given a very rare privilege."

Kavanaugh's concurrence with the immigration stops and the lower court suspension, according to Sotomayor, "relegates the interests of U.S. citizens and individuals with legal status to a single sentence, positing that the Government will free these individuals as soon as they show they are legally in the United States."

Justice Kavanaugh authored a controversial concurrence supporting immigration stops based on ethnicity and language. He wrote that "apparent ethnicity" could be a "relevant factor" in immigration enforcement.

However, he later attempted to walk back these remarks, stating officers "must not make interior immigration stops or arrests based on race or ethnicity," though legal experts criticized this as insufficient damage control for his earlier endorsement of racial profiling.