The New York Law School event follows her Stephen Colbert appearance<\/a>, where the justice tried to extend charity to her colleagues over the shadow docket order authorizing the administration to use racial profiling to target people for looking Latino, speaking Spanish, and having a low-wage job. The cursed waltz of the Supreme Court is that you can call your colleagues democracy-shredding maniacs in an opinion, but in public, they\u2019re all expected to insist everyone\u2019s just doing their best. It\u2019s a relic of a bygone era where people think the public will have more faith in institutions \u2014 especially the critical institutions that uphold constitutional order \u2014 if they think everyone involved means well.<\/p>\n At this moment in history, however, it hits most people as apathy. If the officials fighting over these profoundly consequential questions \u2014 whether in the judiciary or Congress \u2014 can go pal around afterward, most Americans just take that as proof that it\u2019s all empty theater. That\u2019s why Colbert\u2019s interjection as something of an anger translator, keeping the audience grounded in the stakes, made that interview click.<\/p>\n Speaking to this morning\u2019s law school audience, Sotomayor\u2019s comments keyed into a broader lament about civics education circling the drain. Rhetorically, but also hauntingly, she asked, \u201cDo we understand what the difference is between a king and a president?\u201d Great question, but Sonia\u2026 the call is coming from inside your office. She sits on a bench with colleagues who hear that question and respond with 80-page love letters to Henry VIII.<\/p>\n After the Supreme Court decided that presidents can order SEAL Team 6 to kill a political rival without judicial review<\/a>, and the administration took that as a greenlight to start blowing up fishing boats, while saying, \u201cum, they maybe had drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf I were a fisherman I wouldn\u2019t want to go fishing\u201d<\/p>\n Trump admits his blowing up boats in international waters based on (thin) claims of drug smuggling is hurting the fishing industry and clearing the ocean of boats pic.twitter.com\/N8ytvnp2PB<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 The Tennessee Holler (@TheTNHoller) September 16, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n Imagine spending all day spinning how 100% confident the government is that they\u2019ve hit only drug shipments only to have this mentally hazy dingbat go in front of the cameras and tell commercial fishers that they probably should be afraid they\u2019ll get accidentally blown up. I\u2019d imagine it\u2019s a special kind of Sisyphean hell, watching your work constantly undermined day after day until a teenaged intern named HugeNuts decides to fire you over Slack.<\/p>\n Some critics might quip that the law schools haven\u2019t failed because these officials are all fully aware that none of their cheap politicking is constitutional\u2026 they just don\u2019t care. Yet, that\u2019s actually a deeper layer of failure. Law schools aren\u2019t exclusively about doctrinal knowledge, they\u2019re supposed to impress on their students some sort of free-floating respect for the law. Knowing the law and choosing to lie to the public about it is far worse than graduating someone who might not know every part of the First Amendment (not that something like that would describe, say, a Supreme Court justice<\/a>).<\/p>\n Or maybe these people really didn\u2019t learn how the law works.<\/p>\n Either way, if you still believe law schools exist to churn out an intellectual priesthood bound by ethics, animated by civic duty, and committed to the rule of law, then, yes, those law schools failed.<\/p>\n On the other hand, the law school still cashed the tuition check, so did it really<\/em> fail?<\/p>\n Earlier<\/strong>: Kristi Noem Thinks Habeas Corpus Is A Deportation Spell<\/a> The post Justice Sotomayor Thinks To Herself \u2018That Law School Failed\u2019 When She Sees These Politicians With Law Degrees<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way,\u201d Justice Sotomayor told a New York Law School audience this morning, \u201cI think to myself, that law school failed.\u201d <\/p>\n Supreme Court justices\u2026 they\u2019re just like us!<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve followed the news this week, you\u2019ve probably muttered the same thing. The most dangerous place in Washington right now is between a news camera and some grandstanding hack demanding prosecutions for anyone who hasn\u2019t yet tattooed Charlie Kirk high-fiving Jesus on their chest.<\/p>\n The justice has had no shortage of opportunities to mutter this lament under her breath this week, as the most dangerous place in Washington, D.C. is now between a news camera and any Republican official demanding criminal prosecutions for anyone who hasn\u2019t yet gotten a tattoo of Charlie Kirk high-fiving Jesus.<\/p>\n Some outlets<\/a> interpreted Sotomayor\u2019s remarks as directly aimed at Pam Bondi, Stetson Law\u2019s most regrettable export, who declared the administration would use the Kirk killing as a pretext to crack down on \u201chate speech.\u201d But since Sotomayor said, \u201crepresentative,\u201d she likely intended to cast a broader net in the direction of Capitol Hill. That said, the former Florida attorney general has made a career out of proving that a J.D. is not an inoculation against constitutional illiteracy, so the shoe fits.<\/p>\n The New York Law School event follows her Stephen Colbert appearance<\/a>, where the justice tried to extend charity to her colleagues over the shadow docket order authorizing the administration to use racial profiling to target people for looking Latino, speaking Spanish, and having a low-wage job. The cursed waltz of the Supreme Court is that you can call your colleagues democracy-shredding maniacs in an opinion, but in public, they\u2019re all expected to insist everyone\u2019s just doing their best. It\u2019s a relic of a bygone era where people think the public will have more faith in institutions \u2014 especially the critical institutions that uphold constitutional order \u2014 if they think everyone involved means well.<\/p>\n At this moment in history, however, it hits most people as apathy. If the officials fighting over these profoundly consequential questions \u2014 whether in the judiciary or Congress \u2014 can go pal around afterward, most Americans just take that as proof that it\u2019s all empty theater. That\u2019s why Colbert\u2019s interjection as something of an anger translator, keeping the audience grounded in the stakes, made that interview click.<\/p>\n Speaking to this morning\u2019s law school audience, Sotomayor\u2019s comments keyed into a broader lament about civics education circling the drain. Rhetorically, but also hauntingly, she asked, \u201cDo we understand what the difference is between a king and a president?\u201d Great question, but Sonia\u2026 the call is coming from inside your office. She sits on a bench with colleagues who hear that question and respond with 80-page love letters to Henry VIII.<\/p>\n After the Supreme Court decided that presidents can order SEAL Team 6 to kill a political rival without judicial review<\/a>, and the administration took that as a greenlight to start blowing up fishing boats, while saying, \u201cum, they maybe had drugs.\u201d<\/p>\n Imagine spending all day spinning how 100% confident the government is that they\u2019ve hit only drug shipments only to have this mentally hazy dingbat go in front of the cameras and tell commercial fishers that they probably should be afraid they\u2019ll get accidentally blown up. I\u2019d imagine it\u2019s a special kind of Sisyphean hell, watching your work constantly undermined day after day until a teenaged intern named HugeNuts decides to fire you over Slack.<\/p>\n Some critics might quip that the law schools haven\u2019t failed because these officials are all fully aware that none of their cheap politicking is constitutional\u2026 they just don\u2019t care. Yet, that\u2019s actually a deeper layer of failure. Law schools aren\u2019t exclusively about doctrinal knowledge, they\u2019re supposed to impress on their students some sort of free-floating respect for the law. Knowing the law and choosing to lie to the public about it is far worse than graduating someone who might not know every part of the First Amendment (not that something like that would describe, say, a Supreme Court justice<\/a>).<\/p>\n Or maybe these people really didn\u2019t learn how the law works.<\/p>\n Either way, if you still believe law schools exist to churn out an intellectual priesthood bound by ethics, animated by civic duty, and committed to the rule of law, then, yes, those law schools failed.<\/p>\n On the other hand, the law school still cashed the tuition check, so did it really<\/em> fail?<\/p>\n Earlier<\/strong>: Kristi Noem Thinks Habeas Corpus Is A Deportation Spell<\/a> \u201cEvery time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way,\u201d Justice Sotomayor told a New York Law School audience this morning, \u201cI think to myself, that law school failed.\u201d Supreme Court justices\u2026 they\u2019re just like us! If you\u2019ve followed the news this week, you\u2019ve probably muttered the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":133414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Headshot-300x200-vUky3F.jpg?fit=300%2C200&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
SCOTUS Greenlights SEAL Team 6 Solution<\/a>
Justice Sotomayor Lets Stephen Colbert Say What She Can\u2019t<\/a><\/p>\n
\n![\"Headshot\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/Headshot-300x200.jpg?resize=188%2C125&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/abovethelaw.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2021\/09\/sonia-sotomayor-GettyImages-1232483001-300x200.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1\" "\\"\\"")
SCOTUS Greenlights SEAL Team 6 Solution<\/a>
Justice Sotomayor Lets Stephen Colbert Say What She Can\u2019t<\/a><\/p>\n
\nJoe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"