After saying in an interview to the New York Times that Trump “says whatever comes into his head at the moment” and that “he really has an ego”, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has publicly taken back her comments about the Republican presidential candidate. Legal-ethics experts said the comments, made in media interviews, might undermine the court’s authority. In subsequent tweets, Trump called Ginsburg “incompetent” and wondered whether she would apologize.
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“On reflection, my recent remarks in response to press inquiries were ill-advised and I regret making them”, she said in a statement. But Thursday, the Justice backtracked, issuing a statement calling her comments about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump “ill-advised”.
The 83-year-old Ginsburg has a busy summer of travel ahead of her.
The court is now evenly split between conservatives and liberals, who include Ginsburg. The real Ginsburg is revealed to be the kind of petty progressive who considers leaving the country if she doesn’t get her way. A liberal darling revered for her frankness, and legal mind.
Ginsburg has crafted a reputation over the years as one of the court’s fastest writers and hardest workers.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is known for being outspoken, a trailblazer or women’s rights.
Although the code doesn’t formally apply to the Supreme Court, the justices follow it as a matter of course. “She deserves our respect for withdrawing her earlier statements”. If Ginsburg had let these statements go without remark, Trump could have taken this to a legal position, arguing that a federal lawmaker had publicly outspoken political preferences, thus leading the USA legal system to a deadlock.
“I find it very peculiar, and I think it’s out of place”, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, told CNN. Critics argued that such trips hindered Scalia’s ability to judge the case impartially. “She would decide the motion herself, however, and it seems likely that this retraction would lead her to reject it”, said Northwestern University law professor Steven Lubet.
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Even though federal law requires federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, to recuse themselves from “any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned”, the Supreme Court has made a decision to let justices determine their own recusals. Alexander Hamilton, writing in the Federalist Papers, aptly described judicial independence as “requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill humors, which the arts of designing men, or the influence of particular conjunctures, sometimes disseminate among the people themselves”, and which may “occasion risky innovations in the government, and serious oppressions” of minorities.
