Sonia Sotomayor says that Americans may not know the difference between presidents and kings | US Supreme Court
The highest liberal justice in the Supreme Court of the United States wondered if American citizens knew the difference between presidents and kings.
During a conference on civic education in New York on Tuesday, judge Sonia Sotomayor warned that the poor quality of civic education means that Americans may not be entirely clear about what makes a president different from a monarch.
“Do we understand what is the difference between a king and a president?” Sotomayor asked the forum organized by the New York Law School. “And I think that if people have understood these things from the start, they would be more informed about what would be important in a democracy.”
Sotomayor, 71, has identified a lack of education around questions such as the rule of law, claiming that few people have a fundamental understanding of the power of the American president and the limits imposed on the authority of executive branches by the American Constitution.
Sotomayor has been a dissident opinion in many recent decisions of the Supreme Court, including the reduction of federal agencies and the cessation of civil servants who are theoretically protected against political influence by congress.
Sotomayor also issued a dissident opinion when the court last year tried that Trump had immunity against prosecution for his part trying to overthrow the results of the 2020 elections.
“In each use of official power, the president is now a king above the law,” wrote Sotomayor in opposition to the decision.
In his comments on Tuesday, Sotomayor did not approach the controversial political moment which takes place, according to criticism, the executive power exercising power over a congress led by the Republicans.
Recent reports suggest that civic education in class has become a field of educators.
Trump published two decrees in January – a title “to put an end to radical indoctrination in the schooling of kindergarten to the 12th year”, aimed to restrict certain lessons and “the enlargement of educational freedom and opportunities for families” focused on the choice of school.
NBC News reported that Sotomayor’s comments stressing that schoolchildren were educated on the government, and she referred to the survey suggesting that few young people support democracy.
Without that, “what remains?” She asked.
Surveys have found that some teachers now say that they now avoid certain controversial subjects, but make more civic instructions, according to a tracker maintained by Civxnow, the Ipivics plea branch, an organization that aims to advance civic learning.
Since 2021, 24 states have adopted legislation which would add civic courses to the requirements for graduation of secondary schools or has devoted additional funding to the subject.
Sotomayor has also weighed on the debate on free American discourse and the roots of political violence on the same day as the American prosecutor Pam Bondi clarified the remarks made on a podcast that the speech of hatred could be prosecuted under the law as an incentive to violence.
“There is freedom of expression and then there are hate speeches, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” said Bondi in an episode of the Podcast Katie Miller, referring to the murder of Rightwinger Charlie Kirk.
In a long post on X Tuesday, Bondi said, writing: “The speech of hatred which crosses the line in threats of violence is not protected by the first amendment. It is a crime.”
But Sotomayor aut: “Whenever I listen to a representative formed by the lawyer saying that we should criminalize freedom of expression in one way or another, I think that the law faculty failed.”
