If you have to treat the right-wing thug-justices like regular people, I'm afraid I won't be able to serve on the Supreme Court

Justice Sotomayor with Prof. David Strauss, who moderated her 90-minute appearance yesterday at University of Chicago Law School

"'The public sometimes thinks the justices don't like each other because they read our opinions and see the barbs going back and forth,' she said.

"The reality, she continued, was captured in advice she received soon after joining the court from Justice David H. Souter, whom she succeeded. Justice Souter said the key to a pleasant life on the court was realizing that every justice was acting in good faith."

-- from "Sotomayor Reflects on First Years on Court,"
by Adam Liptak, in the NYT

by Ken

It seems fair to point out that Justice Souter got the hell out of there at the spring-chickenly (for Supreme Court justices) age of 69, and gave surprising indications -- surprising for someone who kept his thoughts to himself as much as he did while he was on the court -- that he departed less than completely thrilled with the temper of the place.

Nevertheless, I'm sure Justice Sotomayor isn't making this up -- that he really advised her that the key to a pleasant life on the Court was realizing that every justice was acting in good faith. You'll notice that I didn't put this in quotation marks, because these words weren't actually said by anybody except Adam Liptak, who's paraphrasing Justice Sotomayor paraphrasing Justice Souter. Nevertheless, as I say, let's assume it's not like the old children's game of "telephone," where all the players pass along the message they think they've just received, until at the end the beginning and ending messages are compared, and hilarity ensues.

I confess I would be interested in knowing what exactly Justice Souter said that has come down to us as the goal of leading "a pleasant life on the court, and what exactly he "realized" about his benchmates which has come down to us as "every justice was acting in good faith."

For the record, the point this Justice Souter's remark (whatever exactly it was) was intended by Justice Sotomayor to illustrate was "the misimpression that there is animosity among the justices" -- again a paraphrase rather than a direct quote, but Adam Liptak has been doing this a long time, so let's assume he got this too reasonably right.

"The public sometimes thinks the justices don't like each other because they read our opinions and see the barbs going back and forth," she said.

The reality, she continued, was captured in advice she received soon after joining the court from Justice David H. Souter, whom she succeeded. Justice Souter said the key to a pleasant life on the court was realizing that every justice was acting in good faith.

I don't know, there seems to me to be a certain intermingling of categories here:

* whether the justices like each other

* whether they respect each other's judicial temperaments

* whether they think their fellows are "acting in good faith"

Come to think of it, assuming Justice Souter actually said just that, about realizing his fellow justices were acting in good faith, what exactly does it mean? I'm assuming it means that they have sincere views on the Constitution and the law and they are making a good-faith effort to apply those views, er, sincerely. But did anybody really question that?

I can believe that Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito that government was instituted among men for the purpose of having wildly overprivileged rich white men live lives as God's chosen privileged class, while everyone else eats dirt, or maybe wacko, anti-human extreme right-wing ideology, which is even less nourishing than dirt. In fact, I'm fairly sure they all do believe that. I also believe they're truly bad people.

Therefore I have to conclude that I would have little hope for a pleasant life sitting on a court with such people. And so with some reluctance I'm afraid I'm going to have to take myself out of the running for a seat. Oh, I realize the chances weren't all that great (and I realize it's pretty late in the game for me to be trying to figure out what I want to do when I grow up). Still, just so there's no confusion, I want to make it clear that if I'm asked, I'm going to have to pass.

SOME THINGS JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR SAID
WHICH ARE LIKELY TO STICK WITH ME

Interestingly, these all come with actual quotations. Like this one:

She was asked if she had a special responsibility in cases concerning race, gender and class.

"I do think I have a special role on the court," the justice responded, "but not in the way that you think."

She said that she welcomed becoming a role model and noted that there had been "a tremendous uptick" in the number of Hispanic groups visiting the Supreme Court. Meeting with them, she said, is "a priority for me."

But she added that her background did not affect her judicial work. "I don't come to the process as a woman of color, saying that I have to come to a decision that will help a specific group of people," she said.

To borrow a phrase, good answer!

And Liptak immediately follows this with:

On the other hand, she said she disagreed with Chief Justice Roberts's approach to cases concerning racial equality. In a 2007 opinion in a decision limiting the use of race to achieve public school integration, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

That approach, Justice Sotomayor said, was "too simple."

"I don't borrow Chief Justice Roberts's description of what colorblindness is," she said. "Our society is too complex to use that kind of analysis."

(She also "expressed some skepticism about two of Justice Antonin Scalia's legal touchstones": trying to divine the original meaning of the Constitution, which he favors, and considering expressions of congressional intent in weighing statutory ambiguities, which he doesn't. By the way, I can't be the only one who's had occasion to speculate that when Justice Nino natters on about the original meaning of the Constitution what he really means, but is uncharacteristically reticent to say explicitly, is: The Constitution was written by rich white men to preserve this country as the privileged domain of rich white men, and as long as he draws breath he will do everything in his power to restore the country to that noble ideal.)

Then there's this:

She also recalled the advice she got after congratulating Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired last year, on one of his opinions even as she expressed doubts that she would ever be able to match the quality of his work.

"Sonia, I wasn't born a justice," Justice Stevens said, Justice Sotomayor recalled. "I've had many, many years. You have all the skills to be a great justice, but you have to develop them and grow into them."

Oh man, does that sound like Justice Stevens or what? An important part of life is figuring out who our role models are. No, I don't expect Sotomayor to develop into a "liberal" justice, any more than Justice Stevens was one. But given the reality that we may never have another actual liberal justice, the fully human, thinking moderates become that much more important.

Whereas those assholes Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, and Alito could spend another 100, 200 years on the court and all they'll develop into is bigger, stinkier assholes.


POSTSCRIPT: ABOUT JUSTICE KENNEDY

I notice that in the foregoing I seem to have given Justice K a free pass. It's not that I don't think he's an asshole. Is there really any question about that? I just don't think he's quite in a category with the others. Kind of confused, maybe, and maybe not all that bright, but a truly bad person? Not so much.

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