Exclusive: Justice Sotomayor on AI, taxes and more

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor visited CUNY Law earlier today, for an event titled “My time as a law student.” Two students, one full-time and one part-time, asked her questions submitted by other students.

My reporting may read as quite critical of her. Broadly, I don’t think Supreme Court justices get anywhere near an appropriate amount of criticism and scrutiny compared to the immense power they all wield, even for the “liberal” justices in the minority.

With that in mind, I think it’s worth starting with something that most media organizations (unless you’re Ken Klippenstein) shy away from: her health. No video recording was allowed, so you’ll have to rely on my written descriptions.

Sotomayor will turn 72 in a few months. In the CUNY Law auditorium, there are three steps to get on or off the stage. There is no handrail; every time she went up or down, she needed two people to hold her.

To her credit, she didn’t just stay seated on the stage, she slowly walked through the crowd while talking, regularly taking breaks by leaning on a desk while posing for photos with students.

Sotomayor stated early on that because she can multitask, it was fine for the students to read the question out loud while she was posing for photographs. She initially seemed quick on her feet but made some factual mistakes throughout that surprised me.

The first question was about what law school classes she’d recommend us students to take. She started off with “as many legal writing classes as [we] could take.”

She said that if we can’t explain ourselves in writing, we’ll never succeed at anything in life, regardless of the profession. “The ability to explain yourself in writing is what will get you heard.”

The second skill she said to develop is public speaking, and to find opportunities for it, even if law schools don’t offer it as a class.

She prefaced her third critical skill as something that didn’t exist when she was in law school: AI.

“AI may be the revolutionary technology of your century”, Sotomayor said. “It is going to absolutely alter every single profession in the world.”

A few days ago she had dinner with her former law clerks, she said one told her that they laid off half of their paralegals because of AI. Another clerk told her that all their associates use AI to help draft their briefs.

Sotomayor explicitly described it as “not cheating” and that the skill to learn is how to use it “smartly and understanding its strength and limitations.”

After sharing an anecdote about how her most recent mammogram was read by AI and apparently not a human, she put it even more bluntly.

“You should not be graduating without taking an AI course,” Sotomayor said.

After those three “critical skills” (writing, public speaking and AI), she said that aside from our normal doctrinal classes of contracts and constitutional laws, we should take classes outside what we plan to practice to gain a broad understanding of the profession.

Sotomayor explained that she took an estates class and now all of her relatives, despite her telling them to consult a lawyer, ask her for help with their wills. She also took a tax class, because taxes are relevant to everything — even civil rights.

“Where do the rich get all their money to oppose civil rights?” she asked. It wasn’t clear to me if she was implying support for taxing the rich.

The next question was from a classmate of mine who was formerly incarcerated, asking about the impact and role of lawyers who were formerly incarcerated.

Sotomayor started by acknowledging that lawyers who were formerly incarcerated have made great law clerks, but didn’t know if any had ever been a clerk to a Supreme Court justice. Some of her former district court and circuit court colleagues had hired former inmates as clerks, but apparently she has never done so.

She noted that having relevant lived experience makes you better at what you’re doing, and that type of diversity was just as important as racial or ethnic diversity.

“When I’m asked what’s the greatest flaw on the Supreme Court today, I could name many things,” Sotomayor said. “But the one that stands out to me is our bench’s lack of depth in lived experience.”

No sitting justice has had civil rights experience since Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she said. Odd for her to ignore Clarence Thomas, who briefly worked in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights before running the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Then she incorrectly stated that no current justice has criminal defense experience, which was shocking given that one of the things Ketanji Brown Jackson is best known for is being the first federal public defender to be appointed to the Supreme Court.

Relevant to today, she said none of the nine justices have experience with immigration law. She recommended students not try to just follow what past justices have a history of doing, but rather pursuing whatever interests them, as the standards for picking justices will constantly change.

Next question: what advice do you have for new lawyers going into the profession? She said that despite it being a totally new thing, not to be scared.

Sotomayor started her legal career as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. After failing to obtain convictions in two cases that she felt she should have, she discussed it with her supervisor (or possibly mentor), who explained to her that she couldn’t just let the evidence stand on its own, and that she needed to turn the facts into feelings that would change the jury’s mind.

After that, Sotomayor said she never lost another case (with the exception of a hung jury).

“The most powerful weapons we have as lawyers are words,” she said. “Words can kill … Words can build courage in a way that nothing else can. Words can exceedingly powerful things.”

Sotomayor grew up in the projects in the Bronx and worked her way up to attend both Princeton (undergrad) and Yale (law school). The next question asked about her journey in doing so, and how she navigates being in elite institutions.

She started by noting that her poverty was different than what Thomas endured, as he had grown up in the south where he suffered a more “extreme” type of persecution. And that immigrants come here having faced even worse poverty and situations than what she went through.

At Princeton she said she didn’t understand the opportunities she was missing out on, and wished that she had gone to the theater or attended free concerts that her classmates were going to.

Sotomayor said that everyone wanting to become a lawyer should have the goal of bettering the world we all live in. And that we should not to aim to destroy their world (i.e. do not destroy “elite institutions”) but instead meld them with the world we came from.

The next student question was about how lately the law feels oppressive and supporting those in power rather than protecting the vulnerable.

“If your goal to become a lawyer is to win every case, then leave law school,” Sotomayor immediately answered. “You are a lawyer to fight for lost causes. You will lose cases,” she said, in stark contrast to her earlier remarks about her never losing a case again.

She said these people need a voice, they need a champion, someone who will stand by them even when it seems hopeless.

But then she attacked the underlying premise of the question, which is that in fact the law has rarely been a reliable tool for positive social change, and for most of history it has been oppressive — I agree!

Dred Scott lost every state and federal case he filed, including in the Supreme Court, she said, reiterating its place in the anticanon as one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever.

She continued, emphasizing that it was only through fighting the Civil War was Dred Scott able to regain his citizenship. Sotomayor recited most of the Citizenship Clause, which is currently under attack by Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship and in front of the Court. (She misattributed it to the 13th Amendment instead of the 14th.)

Then it was another hundred years until Brown v. Board of Education, which itself was one of the few success stories amongst many, many failed civil rights cases that were filed at the time, she said.

But she said she still believes in the Martin Luther King, Jr. quote about how the arc of the universe bends towards justice.

A good friend of mine was able to snag the last question, asking about what advice she’d give to law students who followed non-traditional paths and are starting their legal careers later in life.

Sotomayor said to never be afraid of saying “I don’t know.” She said that even in conference, if she doesn’t understand something, she’ll ask someone to explain it.

It’s not stupid to not know something, she said, rather it would be stupid to not know something and then not say that you didn’t know! She encouraged everyone to ask professors questions whenever they don’t follow something in class or have doubts.

Personally I really appreciated the event, Supreme Court justices can often feel like larger than life figures, so it’s nice to get the opportunity to see and hear from one in person. I’m glad CUNY Law is able to attract an interesting set of speakers for us to engage with.