Perhaps When Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called Donald Trump a "faker" this past week, she was just doing what she knew best: expressing opinion and passing judgment. After a simple response to a question asked by a reporter regarding her take on the controversial candidate, Ginsburg found herself at the center of a national debate: Should Supreme Court Justices be allowed to contribute to the discussion surrounding presidential campaigns?
In a time when the politics of the court so heavily impact its ability to proceed, by republican obstruction preventing the appointment of Judge Merrick Garland, it is only fitting that Supreme Court Justices be permitted to voice their opinions and actively contribute to political discourse, without public scrutiny. Particularly when a candidate's policy platforms include flagrantly unconstitutional proposals, members of the Supreme Court should feel an obligation to thwart the continuation of ideology that threatens the principles they are appointed to protect. While Ginsburg's comments demonstrate a break in the precedent of Supreme Court Justices abstaining from political commentary, this break marks a positive step, and should be met with praise rather than condemnation.
The conversation over the role that the court should play in the 2016 presidential election did not begin with Ginsburg's comments against Trump, but rather when Mitch McConnell and the Republican controlled senate refused to vote on the appointment of Merrick Garland in February. This decision was one that strategically dragged the Supreme Court into the center of our national discussion; the 2016 presidential election carried new weight as the election that could tip the scale of the highest court in our nation. With such high stakes, the stances of the eight remaining justices held a newfound importance. Through the election of our new president, not only would the executive branch be up for grabs, but the judicial branch was at stake too.
Yet when Ginsburg spoke out against Donald Trump, the nation acted surprised to see her possessing an opinion- as if her position excluded her voice from the public debate. With Trump proposing a litany of unconstitutional proposals, notably including an outright ban on Muslim immigrants, and displaying a total irreverence for the court through his racist remarks against Judge Gonzalo Curiel, Ginsburg's statements served as an appropriate commentary against an individual who has entirely disrespected our legal system.
Justice Ginsburg's remarks came after being lobbed questions about what she thinks of the Republican nominee for president, to which she replied softly, stating that she finds him to be a faker, that she cannot imagine the state of our country with him as our leader, and that her late husband would jokingly suggest that the couple move to New Zealand. The nation wrongfully responded in an outcry, attacking Ginsburg for abusing her position as a member of the Supreme Court and claiming that her remarks demonstrated a lack of impartiality. Trump himself suggested that she should resign for making such comments, stating in a tweet, "Justice Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court has embarrassed all by making very dumb political statements about me. Her mind is shot - resign!"
There is undoubtedly a great deal of hypocrisy surrounding the condemnation of Justice Ginsburg from the right wing of American politics. Republicans who made the Supreme Court a defining issue of the 2016 election through their refusal to appoint a justice to fill Antonin Scalia's seat, now find themselves on the opposite side of their own argument, claiming that the Supreme Court is above politics and its justices should remain silent during the election season.
Beyond the blatant hypocrisy is the simple fact that at its core, a large majority of the rhetoric spewed by Donald Trump is, in fact, unconstitutional. There is no sacrifice in impartiality by commenting against a plethora of policy proposals that do not hold up to the rule of law, which she swore an oath to protect. While she has since publicly apologized for the comments, we as a nation cannot continue to hold our justices silent when the circumstances pose an obvious need for their perspective.
In Justice Ginsburg's comments I find only one criticism; Next time, Ruth, hit him harder.