Last week, Supreme Court Superstar Ruth Bader Ginsburg tore the presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump to pieces:
“I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” Ginsburg told the Times. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”
Amazingly, this seems to have deeply offended people’s sensibilities:
“I find it baffling actually that she says these things,” said Arthur Hellman, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies the judiciary. “She must know that she shouldn’t be. However tempted she might be, she shouldn’t be doing it.”
Why? Because it shows that she, gasp!, might not be a neutral party in a case involving Trump!
No, seriously, this is what people are saying. And they really do mean it:
The most immediate consequence of Ginsburg’s comments would be if a case involving the election — a 2016 version of Bush v. Gore — came before the court. But there could also be concerns should Trump be elected.
Louis J. Virelli III is a Stetson University law professor who just wrote a book on Supreme Court recusals, titled “Disqualifying the High Court.” He said that “public comments like the ones that Justice Ginsburg made could be seen as grounds for her to recuse herself from cases involving a future Trump administration.
Funny that the Washington Post should mention the single most politically motivated ruling in my lifetime. Bush v. Gore was so over-the-top partisan that it ranks among the top 10 most suspect rulings of all time. But that didn’t stop any of the conservative justices from going on to make another 16 years’ worth of obviously political decisions on top of it. None of which seemed to bother anyone all that much.
Antonin Scalia alone made statements that should have disqualified him from judging a bikini contest, much less sitting on the highest court in the land. His racism and sexism were legendary. John Roberts has been trying to get rid of Affirmative Action and the Voting Rights Act since he worked for Ronald Reagan and no one suggested he recuse himself from those cases. Clarence Thomas’ wife is deeply involved in far right politics and the only people questioning his ability to remain objective are those dirty biased liberals.
Oh, and how about those fun trips that Scalia and Thomas took on the Koch brothers’ dime? Again, no real hand-wringing except from the left.
In other words, when the conservative justices violate every possible code of ethics, it’s all good because, let’s be honest, we expect unbelievable corruption and hyper-partisanship from the right. But liberals have to be paragons of virtue and impartiality at all times lest we send the country into a panic.
Well, screw that! When we start holding the right to the same standards, I’ll give the tiniest of damns about what RBG’s comment may say about impartiality. Until then, she can express her sensible views all day long and I’ll cheer her on every single time.
