USA TODAY International Edition
Kagan, Sotomayor say political view of court hurts its legitimacy
Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, in a Q-and-A session at Princeton on Friday evening, avoided any talk of the contentious nomination to their ranks that had yet to be confirmed but stressed that framing the court as politically divided can undermine the court’s legitimacy. The appearance by the two Princeton graduates came at the 2018 “She Roars” conference celebrating women. Neither discussed the Brett Kavanaugh nomination nor the events surrounding it, but they did stress the danger of the Supreme Court being viewed through a political lens, The Daily Princetonian reported. “We don’t have an army; we don’t have any money; the only way we get people to do what we say that they should do is because people respect us and respect our fairness,” Kagan said, according to NJ.com. “I think especially in this time when the rest of the political environment is so divided, every single one of us has an obligation to think about what it is that provides the court with its legitimacy. “It’s an incredibly important thing for the court to guard, is this reputation of being fair, of being impartial, of being neutral, and not being simply an extension of the terribly polarized political process and environment that we live in,” she said. Sotomayor, a 1976 Princeton grad, said “politicalization of the court” comes from politicians discussing how to interpret the Constitution. She said the Founding Fathers didn’t always agree and wrote the Constitution “so people can decide.” “These discussions have led to outcomes that people can predict,” she said. “Politicians have now superimposed that style on the court. That has hurt the court and may continue to.” Kagan, a 1981 Princeton grad and the first female dean of Harvard Law School, said the relationships among the justices are open and supportive. “We always know everyone is acting in good faith,” she said. “We have lunch all the time and talk about our families. We laugh at each other’s bad jokes. And we get to escape each other in the summers.” But Sotomayor noted that the justices must be always conscious of what they do and say, even far from the marbled halls of the Supreme Court. “I’m much more guarded than I ever thought I had to be before, when talking to friends, making jokes,” she said. “You become more guarded even in your private life.” While neither mentioned allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh, both talked about their careers as women and the challenges they faced. “You can’t be a professional woman, even today, whether it’s in law, in medicine, in any field, without having a moment where someone is going to treat you differently because you’re a woman,” said Sotomayor, CBS News reported. Kagan recalled the framed collection of uniformly white, male former deans that had hung in her predecessor’s office when she arrived. “The first thing I did was take that picture down,” she said.