Justice Sonia Sotomayor: Americans are 'the agents of law' in Trump-era
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Tuesday she believes American democracy remains vibrant, telling ABC News she is heartened by public engagement with the government despite warnings from some legal scholars of a constitutional crisis and tilt toward autocracy.
"Democracy does not survive unless the people in it understand that they are the agents of law, that they're the ones that decide the world they live in," Sotomayor told ABC News Live Prime anchor Linsey Davis in an interview. "Is it at risk? It can be if people take our democracy for granted."
"But I see lots of people taking stands and getting up and speaking and people trying to affect change," Sotomayor said. "As long as I continue to see that, then I have hope."
WATCH: Justice Sonia Sotomayor sits down with ABC's Linsey Davis 7p/9p ET Tuesday on ABC News Live Prime and streaming on Hulu, Disney+ and ABC News apps.
The comments from the Supreme Court's senior liberal justice appear to align with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, who has also downplayed concerns over actions by the Trump administration to transform the federal government and test the limits of executive power in courts.
"I think the Constitution is alive and well," Barrett said last week at an event in New York City.
Sotomayor spoke with Davis as part of a media tour to promote her new illustrated children's book, "Just Shine!" a tribute to her late mother, Celina, who advocated kindness.
"Don't complicate treating other people with kindness and caring," Sotomayor said of the book's message. "That's what my mother taught me,"
Sotomayor said she believes the message is particularly timely.
"We're emphasizing our differences so much we are forgetting those similarities," she told Davis. "During September 11th, we stopped thinking about race and language and our differences. We all came together as Americans. But more importantly, as human beings suffering a common tragedy. We shouldn't wait for tragedies."
The justice did not discuss any recent or pending cases before the court.
Sotomayor's public comments follow a biting dissent published Monday opposing a court decision to lift restrictions on the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement tactics, which critics have called illegal racial profiling.
Calling the decision "unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation's constitutional guarantees," Sotomayor accused the court's six-justice conservative majority of essentially saying "that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low-wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents' satisfaction."
Asked about the diversity of the country reflected in her new book, Sotomayor said she hopes more Americans would practice acceptance of others' differences.
"There's no secret to it, but there is an art to it. It's an art that was taught to me by my mother, which is if you meet someone that is different than you, try to find your commonalities with them," she said. "Once you do that, it's easier to forget the differences."
