Justice Sonia Sotomayor used a law school appearance to cast Supreme Court colleague Brett Kavanaugh as an out-of-touch elitist, framing his background as a blind spot on cases about hourly workers and immigration stops. The remarks revived her familiar theme about judges’ life experiences while also testing the norms of collegiality on the bench. This piece critiques the comments, places them against both justices’ biographies, and argues why such public jabs undermine respect for the court.
Sotomayor’s comments singled out Kavanaugh’s concurrence in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo and turned legal disagreement into a personal portrait. 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. Those hours that they took you away, nobody’s paying that person. And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper.” That language makes an argument about perspective, but it also trades on a stereotype of privilege rather than engaging the legal reasoning.
She doubled down by pointing to her own background as a lens that reveals what others miss: “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.” Framing judicial views as coming from innate moral insight tied to biography risks turning precedent into personality contests and understates the role of law and text.
The exchange echoes Sotomayor’s long-remembered “wise Latina” line, a phrase that signaled her belief that identity informs judging. She has explained that “our gender and national origins may and will make… in our judging,” and she has repeatedly suggested that life experience offers a legally relevant viewpoint. That is a defensible scholarly position to debate in law journals, but making the point by belittling a colleague’s familiarity with working people crosses a line.
Kavanaugh, like Sotomayor, has elite schooling, but that truth doesn’t erase personal sacrifices or public service from his record. His mother, Martha, juggled raising a family while pursuing law and eventually served on the bench, a background that complicates a portrait of pure privilege. Pointing only to Princeton or Yale as shorthand for being out of touch overlooks those nuances and invites ad hominem dismissal instead of serious engagement.
Sotomayor also told her audience, “I dare say that with virtually all of them, I certainly have a civil relationship. And with many of them, I think I dare say that I have a friendship,” which sounds like a reassurance of collegiality. But coupling that claim with public barbs about a colleague’s life invites distrust among the public about whether the court can separate personal slights from interpretive integrity. The Supreme Court’s authority depends on perceived impartiality and decorum as much as on legal competence.
There are real, substantive differences in constitutional and statutory interpretation between these two justices, and those differences deserve robust, reasoned debate. Reducing those divisions to who is more in touch with hourly workers does nothing to clarify the legal stakes in cases about immigration enforcement or administrative power. Voters and litigants need clear legal arguments, not theater about row-of-chair backgrounds.
Sotomayor has defended colleagues at times and opposed certain left-leaning remedies at others, showing she values the institution. Still, public moments like this one are injudicious because they trade on identity and invite a partisan spin that harms the court’s image. If the goal is to amplify voices without eroding respect for colleagues, the method should be rigorous critique, not personal characterization.
For the sake of institutional trust, a tempering of rhetoric would be welcome. A withdrawal or clarification would not be a retreat from principle, it would be a nod to the higher standard expected of justices in public life. That would be the “wise” thing to do.
