On Justice Ginsburgs Summer Docket: Blunt Talk on Big Cases
'Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the most outspoken member of the Supreme Court, sometimes to her regret. Last year, she issued a statement saying that her criticisms of Donald J. Trump during the presidential campaign had been ill advised. “In the future,” she said, “I will be more circumspect.”
She has stayed true to her word, to a point, but she remains blunt and candid. In a pair of recent appearances, Justice Ginsburg critiqued the Trump administration’s travel ban, previewed the coming court term, predicted an end to capital punishment and suggested that the other branches of government are in disarray. Justice Ginsburg, 84, also described her grueling exercise routine, her link to a rap icon and her “graveyard” dissents.
The first appearance came two days after the Supreme Court issued a terse and cryptic unsigned order recalibrating how much of Mr. Trump’s travel ban could be enforced while court challenges to it move forward. The order was two sentences long, and you could figure out what it meant mostly by inference. The bottom line was a split decision: The administration could continue to bar many refugees but had to allow travel from six predominantly Muslim countries by grandparents and other relatives of United States residents.
Supreme Court justices typically let rulings in pending cases speak for themselves. Justice Ginsburg, delivering prepared remarks on July 21 at a Duke University School of Law event in Washington, explained what the court had meant in some detail. She made clear that she considered the recent order a rebuke to the Trump administration, saying its policy had been “too restrictive.” “Just this week, we clarified that closely related persons include grandparents,” she said. “We decided that the government had been too restrictive in what family relationships qualify as close.”
“The court also said,” Justice Ginsburg continued, apparently referring to an earlier ruling, “that other people who could not be brought under the ban include students admitted to U.S. universities, a worker who has accepted employment from a U.S. company and a lecturer invited to address a U.S. audience. As to those individuals, the executive order may not be enforced pending our decision in the cases we will hear in October.”'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/31/us/politics/ruth-bader-ginsburg.html?
