Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday took a break from the middle of a contentious Supreme Court term to console a law student disillusioned with the American justice system.
“Wrong things can be changed, ” Sotomayor told the student, Lauren Burgess, adding: “So don’t give up, OK?”
Sotomayor addressed the audience at Fordham Law School in New York by video from a conference room at the Supreme Court building in Washington, where the justices had met behind closed doors for their regular conference an hour before. The court is currently deliberating over significant cases concerning affirmative action and voting rights, as well as the intersection between religious liberty and LGBTQ rights. The justices are still reeling from the unprecedented leak of a draft opinion last term that ultimately reversed Roe v. Wade, as well as from an array of high-profile cases that divided the bench along familiar ideological lines.
During the talk, Sotomayor – who is the most senior liberal on the court – tread carefully and did not mention any current controversies. But she nodded to the fact that she’s written several high-profile dissents on the conservative-leaning bench in the last few years.
She counseled Burgess to “identify what’s disillusioning you and become a champion of change – go out there and fight.”
“That’s how I get up every morning. I look at what my battle is that day and I accept that for today I might lose,” she said. But, Sotomayor said, she continues to work for change. “The arc of the universe does bend toward justice but we have to help.”
Another student asked the justice about the biggest challenge facing the legal profession in the next five years.
Sotomayor, noting that it faces several challenges, responded that it is “to maintain the public’s trust.”
The justice…
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