Legal analysts have poured cold water on recent calls for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire.
Sotomayor, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2009, is the first Latina and the third woman to serve on the Supreme Court. At 69, she is the oldest Democrat-appointed justice on the Court.
Recently, there have been calls for Sotomayor to retire so President Joe Biden would have enough time to appoint a new justice. This push has resulted from fears that Donald Trump, the presumed GOP presidential nominee, could win in November. Then, if Sotomayor were to retire or die, he would pick a conservative-leaning justice, tipping the Court even further to the right. The Court now has a 6-3 conservative supermajority.
Chief Justice John Roberts is the same age as Sotomayor, and Justices Clarence Thomas, 75, and Samuel Alito, 73, are older. All three men tend to vote as part of the conservative supermajority, while Sotomayor is one of the Court's three liberal justices.
Newsweek reached out to the Supreme Court's public information office via an online form for comment.
Florida-based attorney Michael McAuliffe, who previously served as a federal civil rights prosecutor, told Newsweek: "The public and private musings about Supreme Court justices and their tenures range from the naive to the overly analytical."
He continued: "Justices have life tenure, and they know it better than anyone else. Age is but one of numerous criteria to gauge prospective length of service. For example, Justice Sotomayor is in her late 60s. Depending on health, she could have close to two decades more of active service.
"Calls for her to retire at this point are so unrealistic as to be comical. And those calls from the ideological left ignore the fact that she is a thoughtful, diligent member of the Court," McAuliffe said.
McAuliffe did mention Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death, at age 87, in September 2020.
"Of course, the backdrop for the current round of public statements about justice retirements likely stems from the tragedy of Justice Ginsburg's death while in office," he said. "The crucial factor in the Ginsburg saga was that she had ongoing and very serious health issues while serving [on] the Court. That doesn't appear to apply to any of the current justices who have been subject to speculation about retirements."
Ginsburg died of pancreatic cancer just weeks before Joe Biden won the 2020 election. This allowed Trump to nominate her replacement, Amy Coney Barrett, which created the 6-3 conservative supermajority.
Jonathan Turley, an attorney and law professor at George Washington University Law School, told Newsweek: "I do not see why Sotomayor would retire. She is intellectually sharp and continues to be a major force on the Court."
He continued: "With every new president, there is speculation about retirements. Justices have been open about their timing retirements, with a mind to their replacements. That will likely weigh more heavily in our deeply divided times.
"If the Senate were to flip with a Trump victory, it would likely give pause for some members on both ends of the Court over the prospects for a new nominee," he said.
Calls for Sotomayor's Retirement
Appearing on CNN's Smerconish last Saturday, Paul Campos, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, offered a different view.
"I think Sonia Sotomayor is a great Supreme Court justice, but I definitely think she ought to announce that she is stepping down from the Court this summer," he said.
If the president does win a second term in November, Campos said, "there is a very significant possibility that Joe Biden will not be able to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court during his second term because of Republican control of the Senate."
He continued: "There's also a significant possibility that Donald Trump will be able to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court if he were to be reelected president and the GOP controls the Senate.
"It would really be in the public's best interest for her to do a very statesmanlike thing and step down from the Court rather than running this risk, which would be a completely catastrophic development," Campos said.
Meanwhile, political commentator Mehdi Hasan told CNN's Jake Tapper on Monday that Sotomayor should retire for the "sake of us all."
"Why take the risk? You have a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate, and you have a justice who's about to turn 70," he said.
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