Sonia Sotomayor Wants You to Read the Supreme Court’s Decisions, Not Just the Headlines
You’ve seen the hot takes. Now hear it from the source. Justice Sonia Sotomayor is asking Americans to read Supreme Court opinions start to finish. Not just the headlines. Her case for deep reading is simple: democracy works when people understand the law they live under.
Sonia Sotomayor: “Read the opinions, both sides”
On “The Late Show,” the first Latina to become a Supreme Court Justice told Stephen Colbert she wants people to read majority opinions and dissents before deciding how they feel. “US citizens read the decisions. Don’t wait on news reports,” she said. She added that when cases reach the Court, “the questions are close,” and readers will often find “really good points” in both the majority and the dissent. She urged audiences to “go to the internet and find” the opinions themselves, and not rely on summaries.
Why Sonia Sotomayor keeps pointing back to the people
The justice has been on a media tour for her new children’s book, “Just Shine!” In the process, she has been clear about who holds power. “The power of change is in people,” she told CBS Mornings, adding, “People change what they don’t like or they support what they do like.” She echoed that theme on ABC News, saying democracy stays alive when people know “they are the agents of law” and “they’re the ones that decide the world they live in.”
Her latest dissent and what she argued about ICE raids
This week, Sonia Sotomayor filed a 21-page dissent after the Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s limits on ICE tactics in Los Angeles. She called the order “unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation’s constitutional guarantees.” She wrote, “We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low-wage job.”
On Colbert, she noted the majority said there were “more than those two factors,” pointing to “working in low-wage jobs.” She replied, “I didn’t agree with them.” She called the ruling “yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket.”
Inside the emergency docket, as Sonia Sotomayor explains it
You hear “shadow docket.” She calls it the emergency docket. On CBS Mornings, Sonia Sotomayor explained it this way: it is when parties ask the Court to “bypass the decision of the lower court before they are finished” and “intervene early in the case.” She said critics question “whether it is appropriate for the court to intervene at that stage.” She also said the Court has been “more willing” in recent years to grant emergency relief, which invites “more of them,” according to her Colbert interview.
Sonia Sotomayor on civic temperature and third-term chatter
Asked about the health of democracy, she told ABC News she sees “lots of people taking stands,” which gives her hope. She added, “It can be [at risk] if people take our democracy for granted.”
On the 22nd Amendment discourse, Sonia Sotomayor said on “The View” that no one has “tried to challenge” it. “Until somebody tries, you don’t know. So, it’s not settled because we don’t have a court case about that issue, but it is in the Constitution,” she said. She added, “There’s nothing that’s the greater law in the United States than the Constitution of the United States.”
A book about kindness and a push toward civic reading
Her new book centers on her mother’s lessons. “Don’t complicate treating other people with kindness and caring,” she said. Similarly, she added parents are “your first teacher.” The civic lesson sits beside it. Read the Court’s words. Understand the reasoning. Then decide. As Sonia Sotomayor told Colbert, “US citizens read the decisions… Not in this one, but in others, you’re gonna read the majority opinion and… the dissent… and you realize that the questions are close.”
