A member of the Supreme Court says U.S. law has become too complex for someone without extensive legal experience to work on the nation's highest court.
A student at St. John's College in New Mexico asked Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Wednesday whether there is still a place on the court for non-jurists like Earl Warren and Louis Brandeis.
Sotomayor says the law has become exponentially more complicated since their time and that a lot of that is the court's own creation. She said legal experience is a must.
Questions were not allowed regarding Supreme Court appointee and federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland and the Republican effort to delay the current confirmation process.
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7:30 p.m.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is talking about America — as a philosophical idea — over dinner with students at a small private college in northern New Mexico.
The jurist arrived Wednesday at St. John's College in Santa Fe to speak to about 700 people waiting in a crammed auditorium.
St. John's senior Billy Trabaudo-Loera said a conversation over dinner with Sotomayor dwelt on philosophy more than politics and current affairs.
"We were more interested in philosophy, more than the transitory problems of the American political system," he said.
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3:20 a.m.
Bronx-born Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is sharing her story with students at a private college in New Mexico that is dedicated to reading the great books of the Western canon and Eastern traditions.
Sotomayor is scheduled to speak Wednesday at St. John's College in Santa Fe.
The engagement includes an onstage discussion with St. John's President Mark Roosevelt and questions from the audience.
Sotomayor is a witness to how the high court operates with eight justices amid Republican efforts to delay the confirmation of federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland as a successor to deceased justice Anthony Scalia.
The jurist of Puerto Rican descent is providing signed copies of a recent memoir tracing her life from a Bronx housing project to the nation's highest court.
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