Under Pressure To Retire, Sonia Sotomayor Ought To Tell Detractors To ‘Go Pound Sand’

Does a ‘lifetime’ appointment to the high court only last until it’s no longer politically convenient?
The post Under Pressure To Retire, Sonia Sotomayor Ought To Tell Detractors To ‘Go Pound Sand’ appeared first on Above the Law.

Ed. note: Welcome to our daily feature, Quote of the Day.

The effort to push Sotomayor out now represents a dramatic changing of the terms for a person nominated and confirmed to the Supreme Court. An appointment to the Supreme Court is, under the law, a lifetime appointment, with retirement left up to the justice. Unsurprisingly, just about everyone who ends up on the Supreme Court likes being one of the nine most important people in the country, deciding which laws are consistent with the Constitution and which ones aren’t.

Now, some Democrats are basically proposing that the arrangement be altered: You get a lifetime appointment, as long as the party of the president who nominated you has good odds of keeping the presidency and a Senate majority. If a Democratic president becomes much less popular over the course of their term, or a Democratic Senate majority gets shaky, a justice is now apparently obligated to take early retirement.

— Jim Geraghty, in a Washington Post op-ed, where he declares that it’s “open season” on Sonia Sotomayor and her status as a Supreme Court justice. Many are encouraging Sotomayor to retire from the high court while Joe Biden remains president so that he can appoint her successor. Geraghty counters that Sotomayor ought to tell those who wish her to end her Supreme tenure to “go pound sand.”

Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on X/Twitter and Threads or connect with her on LinkedIn.