Justice Sotomayor and Chancellor Martin speak in the WashU Athletic Center. (Bri Nitsberg | Managing Photo Editor)

When Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor walked onstage Wednesday evening at the Athletic Center, she received a standing ovation from 3,000 undergraduate students, professors, St. Louis residents, and local elementary school classes. The justice, dressed in a bright red blouse and matching Nike Jordans, was there to talk about her new children’s book with Chancellor Martin, but the conversation soon turned to her work on the Supreme Court. 

The book, “Just Shine! How to Be a Better You,” tells a story inspired by her mother’s “ability to help people see their own brilliance.” The book teaches that by listening, helping, and seeking to understand those around us we can “help others shine more brightly.” 

“We should do things out of love, and not the expectation that it has to be returned. I wrote this book in the hopes … that we can make a better world if we show love in positive ways,” Sotomayor said.

 As the event progressed, the discussion morphed into how Sotomayor has applied these lessons from her mother to her work on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I go into my rooms, especially the one I work at, and I listen to people I disagree with. … I remind myself constantly of my mother saying there’s good in every person, in every person with whom I disagree,” she said. 

Many of these disagreements are between Sotomayor — considered to be a liberal justice — and Justice Clarence Thomas, who is considered one of the Court’s more conservative justices. 

“We disagree more than any other two justices,” Sotomayor said. “Yet Clarence Thomas knows the name of virtually every employee in the building, and he cares so deeply that he knows when someone in the building is suffering some difficulty, a parent has died, a child is sick. … Not a lot of people do that.” 

“Now you’re going to say to me, … ‘How could he believe what he believes?’ Well, I can’t answer. I think most of the time he’s wrong,” she said. “[But when] my stepfather died, the first flowers that arrived in my mother’s home were from Clarence Thomas.”

Nevertheless, she said she has struggled with some of the court’s past decisions.

“I can’t escape the frustration or sometimes the anger. It’s inherent in feeling as I do on occasion, that the answers that are being given are wrong by the court,” she said. “I don’t share [these emotions] with others, because this is my burden to bear, but I don’t deny them within myself.” 

When asked what gave her hope in her job, Sotomayor referenced a case in Supreme Court history where perseverance was needed. 

“You live in the town of one of the most infamous decisions in Supreme Court history, the Dred Scott case,” Sotomayor told the audience. “Dred took his case to the Supreme Court twice. He lost.” 

However, she emphasized that even though Scott wasn’t able to witness the case’s lasting impacts, it was not the end of the fight for civil rights. 

“He never did live long enough to appreciate that he helped the civil rights movement by struggling. He got us the 13th Amendment, ending slavery in the United States,” she said. 

She ended her discussion of the Dred Scott case, and her talk at WashU, by rallying her audience to continue fighting for justice.  

“It took another 100 years [from Dred Scott] until Brown v. Board of Education. … Many cases were lost in those 100 years, and many cases are being lost now,” she said. “But we don’t have a right to give up. We don’t have a right to sit on our hands. Nothing comes without sacrifice. But I know we have heroes among us, and every one of us has the capacity, in small or big ways, to be heroes. That’s what gives me hope.”