Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote that a judge should extinguish all politics in public comments when elevated to the Bench.
Because Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg failed to heed those words, she should disqualify herself from the U.S. Supreme Court’s review of President Trump’s revised travel ban.
In a series of interviews last July, she leveled disparaging comments about then-candidate Trump that were stunning and unprecedented for a sitting high court justice.
In interviews with the Associated Press and the New York Times she remarked, “I can’t imagine what the country would be with Donald Trump as our president. For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be –I don’t even want to contemplate that.” Then she added that her husband would have declared, “Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand.”
Days later, in a CNN interview, she said of candidate Trump, “He is a faker. He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego. How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns?”
Those words reflect a clear bias, if not personal animus, toward the man who would go on to become president. Her public comments were not only injudicious, but reckless – especially given that Trump was about to win the Republican nomination days later and stood a chance of becoming the next president.
Every justice knows that legal disputes involving the president and his decisions or orders will inevitably make their way to the Supreme Court.
The complete story here > Gregg Jarrett: Justice Ginsburg must disqualify herself in the Trump travel ban case