Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday said that courts must use their “soft power” to persuade people to comply with rulings on contentious issues.
Her comments during an event at Miami Dade College in Florida came in the wake of a growing chorus among some allies of President Donald Trump, including Vice President JD Vance, pushing back on recent court rulings that have stymied some of his aggressive executive orders.
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That criticism has prompted concern that the administration could defy certain court rulings it disagrees with, with some describing the nation as being on the verge of a constitutional crisis.
“Court decisions stand, whether one particular person chooses to abide by them or not,” Sotomayor said when asked about the importance of the Constitution’s separation of powers. “It doesn’t change the foundation that it’s still a court order that someone will respect at some point.”
Sotomayor, one of three liberals on the conservative-majority court, said she would not be “getting too much into this” when questioned on the issue and stressed she was speaking broadly. She did not mention Trump by name.
She said the Supreme Court in particular has to “make it clear to the society, to the presidents, to the Congress, to the people that we are doing things based on law and the Constitution as we are interpreting it fairly.”
In that sense, the court’s power is “the power of reason, and that’s what most people would consider a soft power, but it’s the most powerful of all,” Sotomayor said.
In response to another question, Sotomayor touched upon the issue again when mentioning occasions when the court’s authority has been questioned in the past and the rule of law put under threat.
“We’ve had moments where it’s been tested, but by and large, we have been a country who has understood that the rule of law has helped us maintain our democracy, but it’s also because the court has proceeded cautiously,” she said.
She was participating in a question-and-answer session hosted by Maribel Perez Wadsworth, the president of the Knight Foundation, a nonprofit that supports journalism and the arts.
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