Justice Sotomayor Heaps Praise on Clarence Thomas’s Character: ‘He Cares About People’
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Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor opened up about her personal relationships with other members of the highest court in the land and praised Justice Clarence Thomas — despite their differences of opinion — for his character and kindness toward the people around him.
Sotomayor, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, spoke at Chicago’s Roosevelt University and was asked about her interactions with the other justices, according to CNN’s Eric Bradner.
“I try to find the good in everybody. Because if I can treat them as people with good things inside of me, they can feel it. They can feel that there are things inside them that I value. And they’re more willing to talk to me … and do it in a respectful way, where we can value each other,” Sotomayor answered, adding:
I have disagreed more with him than with any other justice. Which means we don’t come together on many cases. And yet I can tell you that I spend time with him, understanding that he is one of the few justices who knows practically everybody in our building.
He knows their name, he knows the things about their life, what their family is suffering. He’ll tell me, you know that that person’s wife is sick right now, or that person’s child is having difficulty.
There’s no other justice who does that. I try, but he does it better. He cares about people.
“Now, he cares on legal issues differently,” Sotomayor added, noting their professional differences.
“And he sees those legal issues much differently than I do. I tell people, you know, Clarence believes, just like him, because he grew up very, very poor, that everyone is capable of picking themselves up by their bootstraps,” she added, offering insight into Thomas’s conservative approach as a judge.
“I understand that some people can’t reach their bootstraps. That’s a fundamental difference in how we view what the law can or should or does do for people But I can appreciate him,” Sotomayor concluded.
Sotomayor’s comments made headlines across the media as Thomas has become a lightning rod of anger and frustration from the American left after writing a concurring opinion to the Supreme Court decision this summer to overturn Roe v. Wade. Thomas suggested that the ruling meant other similarly decided cases like those affording federal protections like the right to contraception and same-sex marriage should also be overturned.
