“He has no consistency about him,” Ginsburg said during a talk with veteran Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic. “He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego.”
Trump himself jumped into the controversy on Tuesday, calling Ginsburg’s remarks in the thick of a presidential election “highly inappropriate” for a sitting Supreme Court justice.
“I think it’s a disgrace to the court and I think she should apologize to the court, Trump said, according to The New York Times. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.”
"The Second Amendment has a preamble about the need for a militia ... Historically, the new government had no money to pay for an army, so they relied on the state militias," she said. "The states required men to have certain weapons and they specified in the law what weapons these people had to keep in their home so that when they were called to do service as militiamen, they would have them. That was the entire purpose of the Second Amendment."
Ginsburg said the disappearance of that purpose eliminates the function of the Second Amendment.
"It's function is to enable the young nation to have people who will fight for it to have weapons that those soldiers will own," she said. "I view the Second Amendment as rooted in the time totally allied to the need to support a militia. So ... the Second Amendment is outdated in the sense that its function has become obsolete."
Wearing her black robe with her signature white lace collar, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg presided over the marriage on Sunday afternoon of Michael Kahn, the longtime artistic director of the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington, and Charles Mitchem, who works at an architecture firm in New York.
The gilded setting was elegant: Anderson House in the Embassy Row neighborhood, the headquarters in Washington of the Society of the Cincinnati, a club for the descendants of the French and American soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War. During the ceremony, the couple slipped black and gold Harry Winston rings onto each other’s fingers.
But the most glittering moment for the crowd came during the ceremony. With a sly look and special emphasis on the word “Constitution,” Justice Ginsburg said that she was pronouncing the two men married by the powers vested in her by the Constitution of the United States. No one was sure if she was emphasizing her own beliefs or giving a hint to the outcome of the case the Supreme Court is considering whether to decide if same-sex marriage is constitutional. But the guests began applauding loudly, delighted either way.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Kate McKinnon) takes shots at Justice Antonin Scalia and the state of Kentucky while discussing the Supreme Court's upcoming ruling on marriage equality.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg has had two distinguished legal careers, either one of which would alone entitle her to be one of TIME’s 100. When she was a law professor at Rutgers and later Columbia, she became the leading (and very successful) litigator on behalf of women’s rights—the Thurgood Marshall of that cause, so to speak. President Carter appointed her to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980, and President Clinton to a seat on the Supreme Court in 1993.
Having had the good fortune to serve beside her on both courts, I can attest that her opinions are always thoroughly considered, always carefully crafted and almost always correct (which is to say we sometimes disagree). That much is apparent for all to see.
What only her colleagues know is that her suggestions improve the opinions the rest of us write, and that she is a source of collegiality and good judgment in all our work.
“The issue of gay rights, on abortion, on many of the issues in which Ruth’s opinions and mine differ does not pertain to the substance,” he said. “It doesn’t pertain to whether gay people ought to have those rights or whether there ought to be a constitutional right or a right to an abortion,” he said.
“That isn’t the issue. The issue is who decides,” Scalia told the gathering. “That’s all. I don’t have any public views on any of those things. The point is who decides? Should these decisions be made by the Supreme Court without any text in the Constitution or any history in the Constitution to support imposing on the whole country or is it a matter left to the people?” he asked.
“But don’t paint me as anti-gay or anti-abortion or anything else,” he added. “All I’m doing on the Supreme Court is opining about who should decide.”
“The change in people’s attitudes on that issue has been enormous,” Ginsburg said. “In recent years, people have said, ‘This is the way I am.’ And others looked around, and we discovered it’s our next-door neighbor -- we’re very fond of them. Or it’s our child’s best friend, or even our child. I think that as more and more people came out and said that ‘this is who I am,’ the rest of us recognized that they are one of us.”
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 81, underwent a heart procedure Wednesday morning to have a stent placed in her right coronary artery.
A blockage was discovered after Ginsburg "experienced discomfort during routine exercise" Tuesday night and was taken to the hospital, according to a release from the Supreme Court.
Ginsburg is resting "comfortably" at MedStar Washington Hospital Center and is expected to be released in the next 48 hours.
“When there’s no disagreement among the Courts of Appeals, we don’t step in."
“The major job that the court has is to keep the law of the United States more or less uniform. So when the courts of appeals disagree about what the law of the United States is, then we are obligated to grant review.
“If there had been a Court of Appeals on the other side, we probably would have taken that case. But up to now, all the Courts of Appeals agree, so there is no crying need for us to step in.”
[Ginsburg] said 'there will be some urgency' if [the Sixth Circuit] allows same-sex marriage bans to stand.
Such a decision would run contrary to a legal trend favoring gay marriage and force the Supreme Court to step in sooner, she predicted.
She said if the appeals panel falls in line with other rulings there is 'no need for us to rush.'
