By Payton Carns

On Wednesday, February 5, United States Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor received the Brandeis Medal, the “highest honor” given by the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law.

Established in 1983, the medal, like the law school, gets its name from former Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, and is awarded to members of the legal community that have advanced public service and justice through law.

The ceremony was held at the Louisville Marriott Downtown, co-led by U of L President Kim Schatzel and Brandeis School of Law Dean Melanie B. Jacobs. Other notable Kentuckians in attendance included Governor Andy Beshear, Mayor Craig Greenberg, and several members of the Louisville and Brandeis Law community.

“[Sotomayor’s] extraordinary career and service embodies the principles of Justice Brandeis,” said President Schatzel in her opening remarks.

To introduce Justice Sotomayor to the stage, Dean Jacobs brought out U of L Law professor Enid F. Trucios-Haynes, citing the pair’s shared Latina and New York City roots. Further, just as Professor Trucios-Haynes was the first Latina faculty member at Brandeis Law, Sotomayor was the first Latina appointed to the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor was the seventh U.S. Supreme Court Justice to receive the Brandeis medal. An attorney general and several State Supreme Court Justices have also received the award.

Following the presentation of the medal by Schatzel and Jacobs, Sotomayor participated in a Q&A session with attendees, during which she reflected on life experience and addressed recent moves and public opinions.

When touching on her relationships with her colleagues and her opinion on the court, Sotomayor made it a point to humanize her fellow justices, particularly Justice Clarence Thomas, someone she does not usually agree with. However, Sotomayor also criticized the gap of experience within the court, stating that she is the only one of the nine that have trial law experience. Additionally, no one on the current court has had civil rights experience.

“There’s something wrong about that,” she said.

Sotomayor also noted the importance of trust and transparency within the court. She believes that the courts will lose stability if they continue with the rollbacks of previous decisions and do not follow the consensus of the country.

About Justice Sotomayor

President Barack Obama appointed Sotomayor to the court in 2009; she was the third woman in the court’s history.

As a member of the court, Sotomayor is known for her strong dissenting opinions, and has often ended up on the minority side of decisions in the last three years; she is one of three justices currently sitting on the court that were appointed by a Democratic president.

A particular dissent that Professor Trucio-Haynes noted in her remarks  as particularly powerful was the court’s decision on Trump v. Hawaii, a case that upheld President Trump’s travel ban from certain countries to the United States despite its potential anti-Muslim motivations.

In her dissent, Sotomayor wrote that the decision “redeploys the same dangerous logic underlying Korematsu and merely replaces one gravely wrong decision with another.” This dissent was widely discussed by her colleagues and the general public.

Prior to her Supreme Court appointment, she served as a district attorney and was a member of the District Court for the Southern District of New York and the Court of Appeals. 

Sotomayor cited that the lived experiences of human beings pushed her decision to become what she coined as a “very tough prosecutor.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being tough, as long as you’re fair,” she said.

Sotomayor grew up in the New York City borough of the Bronx and received her Juris Doctor from Yale University. She has now served on the Supreme Court for almost 26 years.

“She makes the court stronger and wiser,” said Governor Beshear in his speech. “Compassion is no compromise.”