“We sparred and we laughed together but so does everybody on the court,” Sotomayor told the audience at the University of Minnesota. “We get angry with each other. There are moments when you want to take one of them and shake them.”

That feeling of frustration was particularly acute, she said, when working with the late Scalia, one of the most conservative and outspoken justices on bench.

“I’ve told people there are things he said on the bench when if I had a baseball bat, I might have used it,” Sotomayor said, prompting laughter. “But when you work so intimately with people, you get to know the really personal good side of them.”