Sotomayor: Political Parties ‘Worst Thing’ to Happen to Judiciary

Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Amy Coney Barrett attempted to distance themselves from political parties and particular presidents on Feb. 23 with the former describing parties as “the worst thing” to happen to the judiciary. “I think the worst thing to happen to the judiciary is political parties, and—at a certain point—political parties decided to take conversations that were occurring between and among judges and academics about how best to approach interpretation of the Constitution and statutes,” Justice Sotomayor during the National Governors Association (NGA) Winter Meeting in Washington. “They began to adopt our buzzwords as buzzwords—some of the discussions we were having like on originalism and plain text and things like that. But instead of discussing those terms with respect to approaches that made sense and why—with all the nuances that those approaches contain—they just began to label people according to the buzzwords.”...