Politics & Power Quote by Sonia Sotomayor

A rebuke disguised as civics. Sotomayor is pushing back on the pop idea of the judge as moral savior, the robed empath who “follows their heart” to justice. By rejecting that framing, she’s not just critiquing a president’s rhetoric; she’s staking out legitimacy in an era when courts are treated like partisan super-legislatures.

The line “Judges can’t rely on what’s in their heart” is doing double duty. On its face it’s an institutional reminder: Article I makes law, Article III interprets it. Underneath, it’s a prophylactic against the charge conservatives often level at liberal jurists: that they smuggle personal values into the text. Sotomayor, frequently caricatured through her own “wise Latina” remark, chooses an almost austere humility here. It’s a strategic self-positioning: don’t mistake life experience for lawmaking, and don’t mistake judging for therapy.

Her phrasing also narrows the target: not “the president,” but “the way the president does.” That’s a polite scalpel. It critiques the nomination-season habit of selling judges as avatars of compassion without accusing the executive of bad faith. Yet the subtext is unmistakable: if judges “determine the law,” democracy gets short-circuited, and court decisions start to look like mere preference dressed up as precedent.

Context matters: this comes from a moment when Supreme Court confirmations were becoming cultural combat, and “empathy” was a political litmus test. Sotomayor’s insistence on application over creation is both a defense of the judiciary and a warning about what happens when we ask courts to do Congress’s job.