The most senior liberal justice on the US supreme court has questioned whether American citizens know the difference between presidents and kings.
During a conference on civics education in New York on Tuesday, justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the poor quality of civics education means Americans may not be entirely clear on what makes a president different to a monarch.
“Do we understand what the difference is between a king and a president?” Sotomayor asked at the forum hosted by New York Law School. “And I think if people understood these things from the beginning, they would be more informed as to what would be important in a democracy.”
Sotomayor, 71, identified a lack of education around issues as the rule of law, saying not enough people have a basic understanding of the power of the US president and the limits imposed on executive branch authority by the US constitution.
Sotomayor has been a dissenting opinion in many recent supreme court rulings, including the reduction of federal agencies and the termination of officials that are theoretically protected from political influence by Congress.
Sotomayor also issued a dissenting opinion when the court ruled last year that Trump had immunity from prosecution for his part in attempting to overturn the 2020 election results.
“In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law,” Sotomayor wrote in opposition to the ruling.
In her comments on Tuesday, Sotomayor did not address the contentious political moment that is playing out, critics say, with the executive branch exerting power over a Republican-led Congress.
Recent reports suggest that classroom civics education has become a minefield of educators.
Trump issued two executive orders in January – one titled “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K–12 Schooling”, aimed to restrict certain teachings, and “Expanding Educational Freedom and Opportunity for Families” focused on school choice.
NBC News reported Sotomayor’s comments stressing that school children be educated about government, and she referenced polling suggesting that few young people support democracy.
Without that, “what’s left?” she asked.
Surveys have found that some teachers say they now avoid certain controversial topics but are conversely doing more civics instruction, according to a tracker maintained by CivxNow, the advocacy arm of iCivics, an organization that aims to advance civic learning.
Since 2021, 24 states have passed legislation that would add civics courses to high school graduation requirements or devoted additional funding to the subject.
Sotomayor also weighed in on the vivid free US speech debate and the roots of political violence on the same day that US attorney general Pam Bondi clarified remarks made on a podcast that hate speech could be prosecuted under the law as incitement to violence.
“There’s free speech and then there’s hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” Bondi said in an episode of The Katie Miller podcast, referring to the killing of rightwinger Charlie Kirk.
In a lengthy post on X Tuesday, Bondi clarified, writing: “Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime.”
But Sotomayor countered: “Every time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way, I think to myself that law school failed.”
