U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Thursday said she regrets making critical comments about Republican presidential contender Donald Trump.
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In a separate interview with the New York Times, Ginsburg joked about moving to New Zealand if Trump wins the White House.
She said: “He says whatever comes into his head at the moment”.
She escalated her criticism in subsequent media interviews, including calling Trump a “faker” who “really has an ego”, in a CNN interview.
The tut-tutting editorialists for the New York Times and Washington Post, who criticized Ginsburg for mixing in politics, should look back a half-century, a century, and two centuries. Last week, everyone’s favorite Supreme Court Justice broke the court’s long-standing custom of refraining from clear political speech to indicate her displeasure at the possibility of a Trump administration. Her comments were ill-advised, in so far as having made them has created yet another circumstance in which Trump can present himself as a victim, and this will also cause problems if there’s any litigation over the election that reaches the court.
In her brief statement, Ginsburg stressed the importance of judges avoiding political commentary. And I think this is just where she got out over her skis a little bit and probably feels so strongly about it that she spoke out.
Ginsburg herself would decide whether she could take part.
Despite the mea culpa, it’s possible that Ginsburg’s comments could come up down the road. She is so horrified at the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency that she found it necessary to speak up to protect America. Now, I have to say she is the most transparent justice on the court.
It’s because of the earlier remarks that her impartiality could reasonably be questioned, Hellman said. The judicial ethics code that binds lower-court judges – but not Supreme Court justices – forbids judges from endorsing or speaking about candidates.
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Direct criticism of a nominee by a Supreme Court justice is rare, if not unprecedented, although there have been tensions between justices and sitting presidents over the years. I think Thursday’s move was as much Ginsburg’s as the original remarks. “For the court, it could be – I don’t even want to contemplate that”.
