Sonia Sotomayor jokes about the times she thought about walloping Antonin Scalia with a baseball bat

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published 18 October 2016

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor got frank about just how much the late Justice Antonin Scalia's quips in court would irk her. "There are things he's said on the bench where if I had a baseball bat, I might have used it," the liberal justice said during a Q&A at the University of Minnesota on Monday. Scalia, who died unexpectedly in February, was known for being outspoken on the bench, unabashedly sharing controversial opinions on touchy subjects such as gay rights, abortion, and affirmative action.

But Sotomayor stressed that their differences of opinion didn't prevent them from having an amicable relationship; she even said losing him was akin to losing a family member. What Sotomayor kept in mind is that Scalia's dissents were sometimes just a way for him to "vent." "If we've lost anything, it's remembering that differences don't stand, necessarily, on ill will," Sotomayor said. "If you keep that in mind, you can resolve almost any issue, because you can find that common ground to interact with each other."