U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor got a laugh Wednesday in Tulsa when asked about the courage it takes to disagree with colleagues.
“Well, now I don’t always write ‘I respectfully dissent,’” she said as the featured speaker at the Judge Stephanie K. Seymour Lecture series sponsored by the Northern/Eastern Oklahoma Chapter of the Federal Bar Association.
Sotomayor spent an hour answering questions from U.S. District Judge Sara Hill, of the Northern District in Oklahoma, about her upbringing, experiences as a first-generation college student and journey to the nation’s top court.
“If you examine each of the situations in which I exhibited what you’re describing as courage, it was because I believe that an injustice was being visited on someone or something else that wasn’t fair,” Sotomayor said.
“If you look at the world not through what affects you, but look at it through the lens of what is happening to others, and whether you can play a role in helping others, that’s where I find my courage. That’s where I’ve always found it.”
For the first 10 minutes, Sotomayor highlighted the trailblazing career of Seymour, who is a woman of many firsts and was in attendance.
Seymour was the first woman to serve on the federal bench in Oklahoma, appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in 1979 and took inactive status last year. She is the longest-serving judge in the history of that court and first woman to serve as its chief judge.
After Sotomayor was appointed to the nation’s top court in August 2009, Seymour was among the first to reach out. They became friends.
“She did every one of those firsts with dignity and kindness and caring that she shows in everything she does,” Sotomayor said. “She’s not only been a brilliant, brilliant judge, she’s been a par excellence role model who opened the door for people like me to walk behind her. I’m eternally grateful for our friendship.”
Sotomayor became the third woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Previously, she served on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York then the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. She grew up in a tough part of the Bronx in New York, raised by Puerto Rican-born parents and landed at Ivy League schools where she graduated at the top of her classes.
Her biggest concern for the U.S. is the lack of robust civics education among children and youth.
“I am terribly worried that people don’t understand that our republican form of democracy will not survive unless we keep it,” Sotomayor said. “We have to work diligently every day to protect our values and to protect our government and its system of government. It’s not something that just happens.
“It was created by our founders to be a system of government where people were apathetic to its structure or to its function.”
Sotomayor sits on the board for the nonprofit iCivics, founded by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor as a nonpartisan group to modernize civics education. The group states that nationally about 5 cents is spent on civic education per student, compared to $50 for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“My greatest fear is that people don’t understand our system of government,” Sotomayor said. “They don’t understand what the First Amendment means. They don’t understand what our system of government presumes.
“Some of my colleagues don’t either by the way, and I’m not joking about that.”
Sotomayor was critical of the unitary executive theory, which is a constitutional ideology of the U.S. president holding total control over the executive branch. Supporters argue Congress cannot create independent regulatory agencies or special counsels. Also, the president in this paradigm can hire and fire anyone in the branch for any reason.
The theory gained traction during the Reagan administration. President Donald Trump has embraced the movement by testing his authority in actions such as dismantling federal departments, using billionaire Elon Musk to lay off thousands of federal workers, terminating grants, withholding funds, indicting his political opponents and firing commissioners at independent agencies.
“We don’t have a unitary executive. That’s not what was created,” Sotomayor said. “We created a government with checks and balances, and the unitary executive theory is overturning that balance. I’m terribly worried about things like that.”
Sotomayor says she has the “most satisfying life imaginable” in a job that she loves.
“Sometimes it’s more frustrating now, but I don’t think that there’s anything as justice that I want to do,” she said. “All I can do is write what I think is the right answer and explain why, and hope that history will prove either that they’re right or I’m right, but put us on the right course, whichever course that may be.”
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