Sotomayor Says Presidents Are Not Monarchs and Must Obey Rulings

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking at a Florida college on Tuesday, made pointed remarks about the limits of presidential power and her fear that government officials might flout court decisions.

“Our founders were hellbent on ensuring that we didn’t have a monarchy,” she said, “and the first way they thought of that was to give Congress the power of the purse.”

The justice made clear that she was speaking in general terms, but against the backdrop of President Trump’s blitz of executive orders to halt federal programs and the scores of legal challenges that followed, her comments took on a more telling cast.

In the first weeks of his new administration, Mr. Trump has argued that he is free to root out what he says is fraud and waste in the federal government even in the face of congressional commands to spend allocations. A federal judge ruled on Monday that the administration had defied his order to release billions in grant money.

The president said on Tuesday he would abide by court decisions. But Vice President JD Vance and others in Mr. Trump’s orbit have said in recent days that some of his actions are not subject to review by the courts.

Justice Sotomayor, a member of the court’s three-justice liberal minority, said she expected government officials to abide by the Supreme Court’s decisions.

She had faith, she said, “that other actors in the system, whether it’s Congress or others, will follow the law, because it’s what we all take an oath of office to do.”

She did not seem confident, however, that court rulings would always be obeyed in the short term. “Court decisions stand whether one particular person chooses to abide by them or not,” she said. “It doesn’t change the foundation that it’s still a court order that someone will respect at some point.”

Justice Sotomayor, whose public appearances have often included discussions with civics-minded aims, seemed to have given the question of the relationship between the Supreme Court and the president quite a bit of thought. She praised Chief Justice John Marshall for his decision in 1803 Marbury v. Madison, which managed to rebuke the Jefferson administration without issuing a ruling requiring it to do anything.

“The court knew Jefferson wasn’t going to obey that order,” she said, adding that “it was a very elegant way of avoiding the crisis.”

She recounted other clashes, including ones involving Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Jackson.

“So we’ve had moments where it’s been tested, but, by and large, we have been a country who has understood that the rule of law has helped us maintain our democracy,” she said.

But prudence and judgment are required, she said. “The court has proceeded cautiously,” she said. “It can’t get so far ahead of the society that the society rebels and ignores it, but it can’t fall so far behind the society to not do the right thing.”

She spoke about relations with her colleagues. The other justices, she said, had acted in good faith even when she had profoundly disagreed with them. “Good colleagues sometimes have silly thoughts, but it doesn’t make them bad or silly,” she said.

Justice Sotomayor said the court should be wary of overturning precedents. “We must be cognizant that every time we upset precedent, we upset people’s expectations and the stability of law,” she said. “It rocks the boat in a way that makes people uneasy about whether they’re protected or not protected by the law.”

She did not name particular decisions, but the court has in recent years overturned major precedents on abortion, affirmative action and administrative law.

The justice’s interviewer, Maribel Pérez Wadsworth, president of the Knight Foundation, asked about the role of the news media in a democracy.

Justice Sotomayor responded with a kind of nostalgia for the information environment of her youth: three television networks and a handful of other trusted intermediaries.

“The press has always brought transparency to whatever the other three branches are,” she said, adding: “The internet is creating an extraordinary challenge to the press and to the world.”

“The lack of news literacy these days,” she said, is a looming catastrophe.

“We’re going to lose our democracy,” she said, looking out over an auditorium at Miami Dade College that included many students. Unless, she said, everyone, “particularly you young people,” took steps to be informed in their decision making.