It takes courage to disagree with colleagues, Justice Sotomayor says
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor worries about keeping a government with checks and balances. (File photo by Jacquelyn Martin-Pool/Getty Images)
Hearing appeals with her colleagues is like a “perpetual en banc,” U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor told a Tulsa, Oklahoma, audience on Wednesday.
And Sotomayor thinks it takes courage to disagree with colleagues, the Tulsa Flyer reports.
“Well, now I don’t always write ‘I respectfully dissent,’” she said at the event, which was sponsored by the Northern/Eastern Oklahoma Chapter of the Federal Bar Association.
Sotomayor, who was confirmed to the court in 2009, also expressed that her “greatest fear” is that people don’t understand how government should work, Bloomberg Law reports.
“Some of my colleagues don’t either, by the way, and I’m not joking about that,” Sotomayor said. According to the news service, she referenced her dissent in Trump v. Slaughter, the 2026 opinion that supports presidential removal authority of officers at independent federal agencies.
“We created a government with checks and balances, and the unitary executive theory is overturning that balance. And so I’m terribly worried about things like that,” Sotomayor said.
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