This month, the crowd at the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture was electrified as a speaker called on the lawyers in the audience to “fight this fight” and declared, "We can’t lose the battles we are facing.”

What was particularly thrilling was that the declaration of "act of solidarity" was not coming from a Democratic member of Congress or an MSNBC host, but from Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

There was a day when such a speech would have been scandalous for a sitting justice of the Supreme Court. For much of the court's history, justices avoided public speaking beyond the perfunctory commencement speech or circuit judicial conference. The tradition was that justices would limit comments on major issues to their written opinions, so as to avoid any question of partisanship or bias against litigants. It was considered a cost of being one of nine.

That tradition, however, was shattered in the 20th century by what I once called the “rise of the celebrity justice.” Despite my respect for them, I was critical of the late Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who seemed to relish appearances before ideologically supportive groups, discussing not only issues that might come before the court, but also making comments in books and speeches on political issues.

The troubling trend has created the........

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