ANALYSIS/OPINION:

For anyone who has any doubts: The Supreme Court has become another political branch.

Case in point: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and her interviews in the past week dumping on presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, predicting a Hillary Clinton win, telegraphing future decisions on controversial court cases and saying she may move to New Zealand if Mr. Trump becomes president.

The 83-year-old justice recently told The Associated Press of a Trump presidency: “I don’t want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs.”

She told the New York Times Sunday that she couldn’t imagine what the country would be under a Trump administration and its tremendous impact on the Supreme Court: “For the country, it could be four years. For the court it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”

She then shared a joke between her and her now-deceased husband, Marty: “Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand.”

Political. Yes. Crossing the line for a justice? Probably, experts say.

These sort of public comments may be grounds for Ms. Ginsburg to recuse herself from engaging in cases involving a future Trump administration, Louis J. Virelli III, a Stetson University law professor who wrote a book on Supreme Court recusals, told The Washington Post.

“I find it baffling actually that she says these things,” 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.”

In Justice Ginsburg’s interviews, she said she thinks the book is closed on affirmative action cases, said she’s eager to overturn 2008’s Heller case, which upheld the right to bear arms, and 2010’s Citizen’s United, which restored First Amendment rights to businesses and unions.

Justice Ginsburg indicated she thinks she’ll be back in the five-vote majority soon and is excited to see a more liberal take on the Supreme Court.

Just a gentle reminder of what the stakes are in November.

Sign up for Daily Opinion Newsletter Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.