The US supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor has said that lawyers should stand up and fight in battles faced by the nation’s legal system, amid attacks on federal judges and Donald Trump’s targeting of elite law firms in executive orders.
“Our job is to stand up for people who can’t do it themselves. And our job is to be the champion of lost causes,” she said on Thursday. “But right now, we can’t lose the battles we are facing. And we need trained and passionate and committed lawyers to fight this fight.”
Sotomayor did not mention the president as she spoke at an event in Washington DC hosted by a section of the American Bar Association (ABA), which has also been targeted by Trump.
The liberal justice’s remarks come a day after the conservative-leaning chief justice, John Roberts, defended judicial independence as necessary to “check the excesses of the Congress or the executive” at an appearance in Buffalo, New York.
Last week, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson forcefully condemned attacks on judges in her own speech. She did not mention Trump by name, but called the threats and harassment “an attack on democracy”.
The nation’s highest court is weighing a growing number of emergency appeals from the Trump administration as his sweeping conservative agenda faces pushback in lower courts.
The president and his allies have railed at judges who have blocked parts of Trump’s agenda, sometimes with highly personal attacks. Trump has also targeted elite law firms over work he disagrees with, leading some to fight back in court and others to strike deals with him.
The ABA has sued Trump over federal grant terminations and Trump has threatened the organization’s role in accrediting law schools over its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
And on Friday it was announced that former supreme court justice David Souter, who joined the court as a supposed conservative “stealth nominee” under President George HW Bush but instead emerged as a liberal justice, died on Thursday at age 85.
He was known to be bookish and reclusive but while on the bench backed abortion rights and dissented in the 2000 ruling that gave the presidency to the Republican George W Bush, son of George HW Bush, over Democrat Al Gore.
Souter, who served 19 years on the court before retiring in 2009, died peacefully at his home in New Hampshire, the court said in a statement on Friday.
“Justice David Souter served our court with great distinction for nearly twenty years. He brought uncommon wisdom and kindness to a lifetime of public service,” Roberts said in the statement. “He will be greatly missed.”
