Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday doubled down on her opposition to the presidential immunity decision last summer and expressed concern about public confidence in the high court.
In her first public remarks since President Trump took office just over two weeks ago, Sotomayor said she worried that the Supreme Court has departed too far from public sentiment, when asked about dwindling public confidence in the court.
“If we as a court go so much further ahead of people, our legitimacy is going to be questioned,” Sotomayor told an audience in Kentucky Wednesday evening.
“I think the immunity case is one of those situations,” she continued. “I don’t think that Americans have accepted that anyone should be above the law in America. Our equality as people was the foundation of our society and of our constitution.”
“I think my court would probably gather more public support if it went a little more slowly in undoing precedent,” she said.
In a 6-3 vote last summer the Supreme Court ruled former presidents enjoy absolute criminal immunity for certain core functions. Other official acts are entitled to a presumption of immunity, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.
Sotomayor issued the stinging 30-page dissent, joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in which she wrote, “Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency.”
“It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law,” she wrote at the time.
She reiterated her position at the event Wednesday night.
“Our constitution itself has provisions not exempting the president from criminal activity after an impeachment,” Sotomayor said. “So, I had a hard time with the immunity case. And if we continue going in directions that the public is going to find hard to understand, we’re placing the court at risk.”
Sotomayor said on Wednesday she worried that frequent court reversals of long-established legal precedent “creates instability” and contributes to the public questioning “of whether we’re doing things because of legal analysis or because of partisan views.”
Sotomayor stressed that she does not “accuse my colleagues of being partisan” and trusts that they “genuinely have a belief in a certain way of looking at the Constitution.”
“And I understand, in good faith, that they think that that belief better promotes our democracy,” Sotomayor continued. “But whether that’s true or not is irrelevant if people are feeling insecure in the changes that they’re instituting at a pace that they can’t absorb.”
The Associated Press contributed.
