If Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg were to follow federal law, and her own judicial obligations, she would immediately recuse herself from any deliberation over President Donald Trump’s travel ban, which has been discussed in the high court and where a decision is expected today.

The Justice’s animus toward Trump is well known. The ageing judge – now 84 – has made several public statements that reveal her bias against Trump and his agenda.

Last year, during the campaign, Ginsburg famously said that she thought Trump was a “faker.”

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“He is a faker,” she said of him in July, going point by point, as if presenting a legal brief. “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? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that.”

Just a few day later, she told The New York Times that she couldn’t imagine living in a country where Trump was president:

“I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” she said. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.” It reminded her of something her husband, Martin D. Ginsburg, a prominent tax lawyer who died in 2010, would have said. “‘Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand,’” Justice Ginsburg said, smiling ruefully.

Ginsburg later apologized for the remarks, but it’s clear that she is neither impartial nor unbiased when rendering a decision about any case involving the President.

On top of that, federal law requires that judges must step down if their “impartiality” “might reasonably be questioned.”

The federal code states that “[a] judge … should act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

It’s not just conservatives who think Ginsberg should recuse herself from the discussion about the immigration executive order. Prominent liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz said that “in an ideal world, she should recuse herself.”

“In an ideal world, she should recuse herself,” Dershowitz, a Harvard Law professor emeritus, said Friday on America Talks Live.

“But then again, [former justice] Sandra Day O’Connor should’ve recused herself from [George W.] Bush vs. [Al] Gore because she told people when she saw the networks calling initially Florida for Gore, she said, ‘that’s a disaster’ and she walked out and that was publicized and she sat on the case.

“The rules are different for the Supreme Court. There are no rules for the Supreme Court. They decide themselves whether or not to recuse themselves … [The late Antonin] Scalia didn’t recuse himself even though his son stood to get a job if Bush won the election rather than Gore.”

Of course, because there really are no rules on this – Supreme Court Justices appear to be above these federal laws – it’s going to be up to Ginsberg herself whether or not she has the ethical fortitude to admit she’s biased and recuses herself from voting on the case on Monday.

Don’t count on it.





