Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh was immediately welcomed into the Supreme Court “family” following his highly politicized confirmation last month.
Justice Sotomayor told CNN’s David Axelrod in an interview aired Saturday that it’s imperative to form a relationship with someone you’re “charged” to work with “for most of the remainder of your life.”
“The nine of us are now a family and we’re a family with each of us our own burdens and our own obligations to others, but this is our work family, and it’s just as important as our personal family,” she said.
“We’ve probably spent more time with each other than most justices spend, who have spouses, with their spouses,” she added.
Mr. Kavanaugh was confirmed 50–48 on Oct. 6 after he was forced to defend himself before the Senate Judiciary Committee against several sexual misconduct allegations.
Justice Sotomayor said all that matters now is how Justice Kavanaugh carries out his duties on the high court.
“It was Justice [Clarence] Thomas who tells me that when he first came to the court, another justice approached him and said, ’I judge you by what you do here. Welcome.’ And I repeated that story to Justice Kavanaugh when I first greeted him here,” she said.
Ms. Sotomayor also declared that the Supreme Court is above “political terms,” dispelling the notion that Justice Kavanaugh’s addition will give the high court a decidedly conservative bent, CNN reported.
“Conservative, liberal, those are political terms,” she said. “Do I suspect that I might be dissenting a bit more? Possibly, but I still have two relatively new colleagues, one very new colleague, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch. And we’ve agreed in quite a few cases, we’ve disagreed in a bunch, But you know, let’s see.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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