Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor rebuked President Trump over his criticism of district court judges.
Sotomayor made the remarks on Friday night at Georgetown University.
President Trump has unleashed on activist district court judges for blocking his America First agenda.
Most recently, Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee in DC, ordered the Trump Administration to turn around planes deporting dangerous Venezuelan aliens.
Trump called for Boasberg to be impeached and on Sunday hinted he may revoke the judge’s security clearance.
In rare public remarks, without mentioning Trump by name, Sonia Sotomayor said judges need to be “fearlessly independent.”
Excerpt from The Washington Post:
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared to criticize recent attacks on the courts by President Donald Trump and his allies Friday evening, calling for “fearlessly independent” judges in remarks at Georgetown University.
“One of the things that is troubling so many right now is many of the standards being changed right now were norms that governed officials into what was right and wrong,” Sotomayor said Friday night. “Once norms are broken, then you are shaking some of the foundation of the rule of law.”
In response to questions from Georgetown University Law Center Dean William Treanor, Sotomayor told law students that those norms could be reestablished but “we are going to have to go back to reminding people what the fundamentals of their obligations as citizens [are] and their obligation to monitor public representatives.”
In laying out the proper role of a judge, Sotomayor recalled something she said she’d been told by a member of Canada’s high court. The jurist said judges should be “fearlessly independent, protective of rights and ensuring the state is respectful of both.”
“That is really at the end what judges should do, but in the end it’s what every citizen should do: ensure that the courts are fearlessly independent,” Sotomayor said. “That we understand that our obligation is to protect the rights given to us under the Constitution.”
Earlier this month Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts defended the rogue judiciary and slammed Trump’s call for impeaching judges in a rare rebuke.
Chief Justice Roberts said Trump call for impeaching judges is “not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said in a rare statement.
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