Ginsburg Thoughts

Since the liberal blogopshere came down as hard (Lemieux excluded) as conservatives on Ruth Bader Ginsburg for saying out loud that Donald Trump was horrible, I guess it wasn’t smart. I’m amazed at how many people I know were offended by this, not only on the internet, but just in conversations I’ve had with other academics. I guess I never had any illusions of the justices being much more than political animals the same as the rest of us. But I am struck at how Ginsburg has now crossed some unacceptable line when Antonin Scalia going hunting with plutocrats or with Dick Cheney when his office had business before the Court or Clarence Thomas officiated Rush Limbaugh’s wedding or Sam Alito openly disrespecting Obama during the State of the Union address evidently didn’t cross the line.

I guess some people still really feel invested in the idea that the Supreme Court is somewhat above the political fray and that there are norms and decorum that must be respected, but it feels a bit childish to me. The more the curtain is drawn back that the Court is as full of political hacks as anywhere else, the more honest, if cynical, our politics will be.