“I can’t imagine what this place would be – I can’t imagine what the country would be – with Donald Trump as our president”, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in The New York Times this week.
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As a brilliant, bold, trailblazing jurist, Bader Ginsburg is someone I’ve long admired, so it is hard to criticize her for speaking her mind, as she has encouraged so many women to do over the years.
She added that her late husband, a tax lawyer who died in 2010, would have said of Trump: “Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand”. Justice Ginsburg has every right to be concerned, as does anyone who cares about this country. He really has an ego.
Ginsburg’s were the kinds of comments you expect from a liberal pundit or even a surrogate for Hillary Clinton’s campaign – particularly the part accusing the press of taking it too easy on Trump. Ginsburg might feel strongly that Trump would be a very bad president and is certainly more willing to speak candidly about politics than other justices. Justice Ginsburg at age 83 is not only the oldest Justice in the Supreme Court, but she has suffered numerous serious illnesses, including colon and pancreatic cancer, anemia, and coronary artery disease, that may have gradually come to affect her stamina and judgment.
When O’Connor did not go on to recuse herself when the Supreme Court heard the landmark Bush v Gore which would ultimately hand the presidency to the Republican candidate was widely condemned in the US.
She continued, “Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office. Her mind is shot – resign!” he wrote on Twitter Tuesday.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Ginsburg’s statement.
Ginsburg extensively criticized Trump as “a faker” in an interview with CNN earlier this week. The Constitution (Article III, Section 1) says only, “Judges, both of the Supreme Court and the inferior courts, should hold their offices during good behaviour”.
As legal experts explained to me this week, Ginsburg’s comments weren’t just troubling because they might call into question her impartiality in future cases involving Trump or a Trump administration; they were also problematic because there is a principle of judicial independence and the separation of powers at stake.
In reality, of course, Justice Ginsburg needn’t have said anything at all in response to the criticism that her remarks generated.
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Ginsburg, seen as a tough-as-nails figure, was appointed to the court in 1993 by then president Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and is the darling of the progressive community in America, especially young people.
