U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton meets with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., on January 25, 2012. [State Department photo/ Public Domain]
Justice RBG was not Menton’s idea of what a Supreme Court Justice should be. RBG had a strong work ethic, however, and she was the polar opposite of today’s ideological Left. She dealt civilly with her ideological opposites, as the Manhattan Contrarian writes in a recent post.
Indeed, in many respects, she was the opposite.
Rather than write a fresh collection of criticisms, permit me mainly to refer back to two posts on the subject of Justice Ginsburg that I wrote several years ago. On July 21, 2016, it was “Free Speech For Me But Not For Thee”; and on January 1, 2019, it was “Is Ruth Bader Ginsburg A Good Supreme Court Justice?”
Mr. Menton encourages readers to read both posts, but for readers who may want a shortened summary, he provides a review of his criticism:
“Free Speech For Me, But Not For Thee”
“A couple of weeks ago Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg gave several media interviews that then rightly brought her a torrent of criticism. In the portion that drew the most attention, she rather un-judicially stated a preference for one candidate over the other in the midst of the current presidential campaign. But in other parts of the interviews that you may not have noticed, she engaged in even more inappropriate conduct by indicating in advance how she would rule on various issues likely to come before the Court.”
“Is RBG A Good Supreme Court Justice?”
“Basically, (RGB) said in so many words that she has already pre-judged pretty much all of the most important issues likely to come before the Court any time soon, and don’t waste your breath trying to persuade her otherwise. OK, we already knew that, but do you have to be quite so explicit? In one of her most over-the-top statements, she is quoted by Adam Liptak of the New York Times on July 10 as having said “I’d love to see Citizens United overruled.”
Francis Mention also discuses why RBG was not a heroine worthy of great praise and adulation.
Ginsburg an Anchor for the Liberal Minority
If you want my opinion, she’s about the worst possible Supreme Court Justice you could ever get. Why? Because she has no appreciation of our constitutional order, and of why it makes for a successful country. Her opinions appear to me to have no overriding rationale other than I’m for whatever our progressive team is for, and I’m against whatever our progressive team is against, and I’ll find some basis in the Constitution to make that work. She is a 100% reliable vote for the liberal bloc (and the official New York Times/Washington Post position) in any case of political significance.
Anyway, Ginsburg clearly wanted to be replaced by an appointee of a Democratic President, but she also thought that no potential replacement would be as good as she at advancing the progressive cause. So she stayed on to the end of Obama’s second term, expecting Hillary Clinton to win, and she lost that bet.
