Following Ruth Bader Ginsburg's controversial criticisms of a potential Donald Trump presidency, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has called on the Supreme Court justice to resign. "I can't imagine what this place would be — I can't imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president," Ginsburg recently told The New York Times. She also told CNN that she thought Trump was a "faker" with "no consistency." Trump subsequently fired back with calls for her resignation, but will Justice Ginsburg resign? It's highly unlikely.
In a series of tweets, Trump criticized Ginsburg for her comments and demanded that she step down from her role as a Supreme Court justice. But other top Republicans, though they agreed with Trump that Ginsburg's comments were "inappropriate," would not go so far as to support his call for her resignation. The longest-serving GOP senator, Orrin Hatch, was one such Republican, and he told CNN that "those comments were inappropriate. On the other hand, she's reached a point in her life that she ought to say whatever she wants to." Even Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump's opponent in the GOP primaries, stopped short of demanding her resignation.
Supreme Court justices are not legally obligated to refrain from offering their opinions on political campaigns; instead, much of the criticism of Ginsburg is rooted in the belief that she may have to recuse herself from cases involving Trump and his campaign in the future, especially if he becomes president. While this criticism is valid, it should also not be surprising that Ginsburg — who has accumulated a significant following on the left, particularly for her vocal support of women's rights — voiced her concerns about a potential Trump presidency. And although Ginsburg refused to comment on Trump's call for her resignation, the likelihood that she would resign now is fairly slim.
This is not the first time that people have suggested Ginsburg resign. Back in 2014, she pushed back against suggestions that she should retire, noting that President Obama would be unlikely to get a justice approved by the Senate whom she would be pleased with. It's almost as though she predicted the president's attempts to get the Senate to take action on Merrick Garland's nomination. In 2015, she continued to refute claims that she was getting too old to stay on the bench, citing former justices who had served longer terms.
Tensions are obviously high right now, as the party conventions and the general elections edge closer. But Ginsburg has a history of speaking her mind, and while justices typically don't offer such explicit political opinions on presidential campaigns, it doesn't look like Ginsburg is going to back down in the near future.
