Supreme Court justice's public 'dagger' at Kavanaugh was no accident: analysts

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor leveled serious criticism at fellow Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his "Kavanaugh stops," Slate legal experts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explained on Friday.

The race-based detentions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection that Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court's conservative supermajority approved last year give federal immigration agents permission to detain Latinos based, in part, on their "apparent ethnicity."

Sotomayor had a stern comment for Kavanaugh: "I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops. This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn't really know any person who works by the hour."

"Justice Sotomayor usually goes out of her way to compliment her colleagues when she does these talks, including those on the right. She focuses on collegiality and how they all respect each other," Lithwick said. "She’s made headlines for lavishing praise on Clarence Thomas in the past. So why did she aim this dagger at Kavanaugh?"

Mark Joseph Stern described why Sotomayor's blunt response was significant.

"Well, I think this was almost certainly intentional and preplanned," Stern said. "When Justice Sotomayor does these public events, she generally seems to plant questions with her interlocutor that will allow her to make a statement. She knows she’s going to make news. So no one should think this was just Sotomayor riffing off the cuff. I believe it’s something she wanted both us and Kavanaugh to hear."