Justice Sotomayor is showing her liberal peers on SCOTUS how to be a potent minority voice

[babylonsister]

Justice Sotomayor is showing her liberal peers on SCOTUS how to be a potent minority voice
She’s not compromising, and she’s not pulling her punches.
By David Fontana Jul 6, 2018, 9:55am EDT


The retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy — along with the series of conservative decisions that he joined at the end of the Supreme Court term preceding his retirement —make this a deeply depressing time for liberal jurisprudence. The travel-ban decision may have been bad, in short, but worse may be yet to come.

But this term also provided a ray of light amidst the darkness: Justice Sonia Sotomayor emerged as a uniquely effective member of the Court.

In her votes and in her voice on and off the bench, Justice Sotomayor has unflinchingly called out the Court’s rightward turn, and is confronting it. She’s not strategically tacking in a misguided effort to compromise with increasingly uncompromising conservative colleagues. In doing so, she’s providing a roadmap for how liberal justices should perform when they’re in the minority, which is where they’re likely to be for some time.

The dilemma: confront or compromise?

The four liberal justices have for years faced a complicated tactical decision on a Court in which they’re consistently outnumbered. Do they cooperate with the conservative justices, even when they might prefer not to, in the hopes that conservatives will in turn cooperate with the liberals more often? Or do they confront the conservatives by voting and speaking their minds, assuming their colleagues on the bench cannot be persuaded — but that others in the legal or political community can be?

Relative to her liberal colleagues, Sotomayor is more confrontational and less cooperative. She has been the most consistent among the liberal justices in dissenting from significant decisions crafted by conservative majorities, particularly this term (with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the more familiar liberal icon, a close second).

more...

https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/7/6/17538362/sotomayor-kennedy-retirement-liberal-wing-dissent-travel-ban-rbg

[dlk]

1. Go Sonia!

[uponit7771]

2. K&R

[Bayard]

3. Please stay healthy!!