Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court dissents give voice to liberal frustrations

During her 2009 confirmation hearing before the US Senate, Sonia Sotomayor declared that the president “can’t act in violation of the constitution. No one is above the law”. Back then, she was answering a question about former president George W Bush’s application of a bill banning torture. Now, 15 years later, Sotomayor has once again raised this tenet as a Supreme Court justice, dissenting from an opinion that granted Donald Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution for his “official” acts as president. “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law,” she wrote. It is just one example this term of how Sotomayor, often joined by her two fellow liberals on the bench, has pushed back forcefully and vented frustrations about the court’s conservative majority, whose decisions have reshaped American government and society, from presidential immunity and abortion to regulators’ powers and gun policy. Sotomayor has been a pillar of the high court’s left-leani

During her 2009 confirmation hearing before the US Senate, Sonia Sotomayor declared that the president “can’t act in violation of the constitution. No one is above the law”. Back then, she was answering a question about former president George W Bush’s application of a bill banning torture. Now, 15 years later, Sotomayor has once again raised this tenet as a Supreme Court justice, dissenting from an opinion that granted Donald Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution for his “official” acts as president. “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law,” she wro