Supreme Court Justice Says Judges Must Be ‘Fiercely Independent’

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor told students at Georgetown University that judges should be “fiercely independent” in responding to growing challenges to the rule of law.

Speaking at a forum Friday, Sotomayor said judges need to “ensure that the state is respectful” of both judicial independence and the rights protected by the Constitution.

Sotomayor didn’t mention President Donald Trump or his criticism of judges who ruled against him in some of the more than 175 lawsuits challenging his executive orders. But the liberal justice acknowledged concerns that the country was seeing a decline in “common norms,” which she said were crucial to a functioning justice system.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Photographer: Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo/Bloomberg

“Once we lose our common norms, we’ve lost the rule of law completely,” Sotomayor, 70, said during an hourlong conversation with Georgetown’s law school dean, William Treanor.

Earlier in the day, Trump asked the Supreme Court to let his administration resume deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without hearings.

The president argueshe has the authority under a 1798 law previously used only in wartime. The deportations have been on hold since March 15, when the administration sent two planes of migrants to a prison in El Salvador despite a judge’s verbal order for the aircraft to turn around.

Trump and his aides have repeatedly blasted judges for halting parts of his far-reaching agenda. Earlier this month, the president posted on social media that the jurist in the deportation case was a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator” and should be impeached.

After Trump made those remarks, Chief Justice John Roberts issued an unusual statement, saying the impeachment of federal judges is “not an appropriate response” to disagreement with their rulings.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sara Forden at sforden@bloomberg.net

Steve Stroth, Peter Blumberg

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