Justice Sotomayor concerned Americans cannot distinguish between presidents and kings

By John Fritze, CNN

(CNN) — Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday urged a greater emphasis on civic involvement and education, questioning whether some Americans had been clearly taught the difference between a president and a king.

Speaking to the New York Law School in Manhattan, the Supreme Court’s senior liberal encouraged people to get involved and lamented what she described as a lack of knowledge about fundamental aspects of American law.

“Do we understand what the difference is between a king and president?” Sotomayor said at one point. “I think if people understood these things from the beginning, they would be more informed as to what would be important in a democracy in terms of what people can or should not do.”

Sotomayor did not directly address President Donald Trump, nor criticism about his efforts to consolidate power within the executive branch. The Supreme Court is considering several appeals challenging the president’s power to unilaterally impose tariffs, fire leaders of independent agencies, and claw back federal spending approved by Congress.

Sotomayor, who was nominated to the court by President Barack Obama, has frequently been in dissent in similar cases over the past year.

“The relationship between the president and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably,” she wrote in a dissent last year when a majority of the court granted Trump broad criminal immunity for actions taken in office. “In every use of official power, the president is now a king above the law.”

Most of Sotomayor’s remarks Tuesday focused not on current events but on civic education. In her own experience, Sotomayor said that schools covered only the basics of how government works.

“What they didn’t teach back then was the principles that motivated the structure of government,” she said.

Schools, Sotomayor said, “really didn’t explain, in more than a cursory way, what the functions were between the branches and what the expectations were of service in government.”

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