“I can’t imagine what this place (the Supreme Court) would be-I can’t imagine what the country would be-with Donald Trump as our president”.
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But Ginsburg went even further by publicly stating her opinion of a candidate during a campaign. What Ginsburg now regrets is that she was honest about how she views her role on the bench: a starkly partisan one. The Justice added that she, “regret(s) making them”.
She said: “He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. The press seems to be very gentle with him on that”. Fans would have questioned her calls, and they would have been right.
Ginsburg’s remarks were received with instant and widespread criticism, including from The New York Times’ editorial board, high-profile legal experts like Jeffrey Toobin and, of course, Trump himself.
With politics sharply dividing our nation, a Supreme Court justice does herself, her institution and, most importantly, her nation no good by calling a presidential candidate a faker and an egomaniac. In the past, Ginsburg has brushed aside calls for her to resign from the Court, including those that called on her to step aside sometime in the last two years or so in order to give President Obama a chance to fill her seat with someone who mirrors her judicial philosophy rather than risk the possibility that a Republican President would be the one who gets to do that.
Trump, speaking on a radio show hosted by 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, said Ginsburg’s statement “wasn’t really an apology, but you know we have to move on anyway”.
She said in an interview that she expects the next president, “whoever she will be”, probably will have several Supreme Court appointments.
“A federal law requires all federal judges, including the justices, to recuse themselves if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned”, said Stephen Gillers, a legal ethicist at New York University School of Law.
Though Ginsburg eventually apologized and acknowledged that her remarks were ill-advised, it won’t necessarily undo the damage she caused. It’s particularly liberating for a woman of a certain age to finally feel free – especially after a lifetime of implied societal constraints that force her to bite her lip more times than she can remember, choking on the blood of restraint while she does it. “I think she felt like she wanted to acknowledge that she made a mistake instead of just waiting to hope that the issue would die down”.
Ginsburg responded, “I stand, Nina, by what I said”.
Despite the mea culpa, it’s possible that Ginsburg’s comments could come up down the road. The moderately conservative justice’s husband consequently told guests that she wanted to retire but wasn’t willing to do so if it meant her successor would be appointed by a Democratic president. She has drawn a cult-like following among young people who have nicknamed her The Notorious R.B.G., a play on American rapper The Notorious B.I.G.
The nine-member court has been shorthanded since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February. Beyond that, her commentary serves only to diminish the institution on which she serves. Chief Justice John Roberts worked in the White House counsel’s office during the Reagan administration.
“Maybe this is an example of how hyperpolarization affects the court”, he said.
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“That’s not the way we do business”.
