Supreme Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor told Georgetown University students that judges should “fiercely independent” in meeting the growing challenges to the rule of law.
Speaking at the forum on Friday, Sotomayor said the judges need to “ensure that the state will respect” both the independence of the judicial system and the rights protected by the constitution.
Sotomayor did not mention his criticism of President Donald Trump or the judge who controlled him in some of the more than 175 cases that challenged his executive order. However, liberal justice acknowledged concerns that the country is seeing a decline in “common norms.”
“We lost our common norms and we lost all the rule of law,” said Sotomayor, 70, during an hour-long conversation with William Trenner, dean of the Georgetown law school.
Earlier that day, Trump asked the Supreme Court to resume deporting members of Venezuelan gangs without a hearing.
presidentMake a claimHe is powered under the law of 1798, previously only used during the war. The deportation has been on hold since March 15th, and the administration has sent two migrants to a prison in El Salvador despite the judge’s oral orders to help the aircraft get better.
Trump and his aides repeatedly blow the judges away for stopping some of his widespread agenda. Earlier this month, the president posted on social media that the legal scholar in deportation cases was “the fundamental left-hand man of judges, troublemakers and agitators” and should be fired up each.
After Trump made these remarks, Secretary John Roberts issued an unusual statement, saying that federal judges’ perpetrators were a “appropriate response” to their disagreement with their ruling.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.
