Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has revealed that she lives “in frustration” among the court’s conservative majority but has to “get up the next morning and keep on fighting.”
Sotomayor commented Monday while speaking to a packed auditorium of students at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law.
“I live in frustration. Every loss truly traumatizes me in my stomach and in my heart,” Sotomayor said, according to Bloomberg Law. “But I have to get up the next morning and keep on fighting.”
“And to be almost 70 years old, this isn’t what I expected,” she reportedly added during a conversation with UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky. “But it is still work that is all consuming and I understand the impact the court has on people and on the country, and sometimes the world. And so it is what keeps me going.”
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Sotomayor also said cases have become “bigger” and more “demanding” in recent years, Bloomberg Law reports.
“The number of amici are greater, and you know that our emergency calendar is so much more active. I’m tired,” the news organization quoted her as saying. “There used to be a time when we had a good chunk of the summer break. Not anymore. The emergency calendar is busy almost on a weekly basis.”
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At one point during the event, Sotomayor roamed among students in the audience.
“Change never happens on its own. Change happens because people care about moving the arc of the universe toward justice,” she told them, according to KTVU, adding, “What choice do you have but to fight the good fight?”
When asked how she gets along with colleagues with differing views, Sotomayor said: “If you look for the good in people, you can deal with the bad more easily. They are as passionate about what they believe, about the Constitution, about law, about our country, as I am. We have a different way of understanding what’s good for the country and the law, but it’s not because they’re men or women of ill will.”
