Ginsburg abandoned
judicial propriety to wrestle in the mud with a candidate she detests.
(Above, Justice Ruth
Bader Ginsburg on May 8, 2006, in Washington, D.C.)
RBG Just Risked Her
Legacy to Insult Trump
Why she did it.
By Mark Joseph Stern
I think that it is
all President Barrack Obama's fault and Hillary Clinton helped him with the
Voodoo spell on the greatest Supreme Court Judge ever, baring none!
Oh Wait,
I cannot
say that
I am not a member of the republican congress
of complete buffoons!
Donald Trump is
not an ordinary presidential candidate, or an ordinary Republican.
He has proposed
banning Muslims from entering the United States;
called Mexican
immigrants rapists
and criminals;
Supported the
deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants;
Routinely treated
women with sexist
disdain;
Advocated for torture
of suspected terrorists;
Moreover, generally
dismissed the rule of law.
He is, a fascist.
Oh, Wait!
I can say that
because.
He is the leader of those self-made Jester and their Republican presidential nominees.
Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg has decided to take a stand against a major party’s presidential
candidate in a way that she—and arguably
no prior justice—has ever done before. Over the course of several
interviews, the justice has spent the last few days hammering Donald Trump for
his reckless campaign and outrageous policies, suggesting that a President
Trump would pose a serious danger to the republic. Her explicitly political
statements set off a familiar firestorm about whether Ginsburg had “crossed
the line,” sending the conservative
blogosphere in particular into howling fantods.
Critics on the left
and right have criticized Ginsburg’s comments as explosive, unprecedented, and
unethical.
They are. That’s the
point.
To recap the
controversy, Ginsburg’s campaign began with a
light jab at Trump in a Thursday interview, in which the justice admitted
she didn’t “want to think about” the possibility of a Trump presidency. Then,
on Friday, Ginsburg
told the New York Times’ Adam Liptak, “I can’t imagine what this place
would be—I can’t imagine what the country
would be—with Donald
Trump as our president.” Days after her Times interview, Ginsburg told CNN’s
Joan Biskupic that Trump is a “faker”
with “no consistency” and she criticized his refusal to release his tax
returns. “He really has an ego,” she said (correctly and understatedly).
There is really very
little to debate about the ethics of Ginsburg’s comments. They were plainly a
violation, the kind of partisan partiality that judicial ethics codes strive to
prevent. But Ginsburg, who is a quietly canny judicial and political strategist,
surely knows that her comments were an ethical error. That leads to a
fascinating question: Why would the justice risk her reputation and good
standing—and even her power to hear cases involving Trump—for a few quick jabs
at the candidate? The answer, I suspect, is that Ginsburg has decided to
sacrifice some of her prestige in order to send as clear a warning signal about
Trump as she possibly can. The subtext of Ginsburg’s comments, of her
willingness to comment, is that Trump poses an unparalleled threat to this
country—a threat so great that she will abandon judicial propriety in order to
warn against looming disaster.
To be clear, what
Ginsburg is doing right now—pushing her case against Trump through
on-the-record interviews—is not just unethical; it’s dangerous. As a general
rule, justices should refrain from commenting on politics, period. That dictate
applies to 83-year-old
internet folk heroes as strictly as it applies to anybody else who dons
judicial robes. The independence of our judiciary—and just as critically, its
appearance of impartiality—hinges on a consistent separation between itself and
the other branches of government. That means no proclamations of loyalty to any
candidate, or admissions of distaste of any other.
You don’t need to be
a judicial ethicist to see the wisdom of this principle. Trump is a litigious
man; should he take a campaign-related lawsuit to the court, Ginsburg will now
surely be pressed to recuse herself. And of course, more significantly, these
calls for recusal would accompany every case involving a possible Trump
administration. (Through the Department of Justice, the executive branch is
tasked with defending federal laws and presidential actions in court.)
Moreover, Ginsburg’s comments all but begged Trump to respond—which he did on
Tuesday, with a surprisingly coherent rebuke.