Over the weekend Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a dissent in which she basically accused her 5 more conservative justices of being biased in favor of the Trump administration:
... the Court’s recent behavior on stay applications has benefited one litigant over all others. This Court often permits executions—where the risk of irreparable harm is the loss of life—to proceed, justifying many of those decisions on purported failures “to raise any potentially meritorious claims in a timely manner.” ... Yet the Court’s concerns over quick decisions wither when prodded by the Government in far less compelling circumstances— where the Government itself chose to wait to seek relief, and where its claimed harm is continuation of a 20-year status quo in one State. I fear that this disparity in treatment erodes the fair and balanced decisionmaking process that this Court must strive to protect.
This comes on top, of course, of RBG's routine anti-Trump/Republican political pronouncements.
Closer to home, the LA Times gave voice to a bunch of 9th Circuit judges who are outraged that Trump has appointed conservatives to their liberal bastion, albeit most of them were either not so outraged as to allow their names to be revealed (or perhaps too lacking in courage), as Josh Blackman points out:
[Article author Maura] Dolan noted that "some" of the judges "declined to discuss their colleagues or inner deliberations." That "some" should have been "all." Why would any judges discuss their "colleagues" or opine on "internal deliberations"?
Alas, some judges "refused to be quoted by name, saying they were not authorized to speak about what goes on behind the scenes." In other words they spoke on background, not for attribution. Judges cannot speak on background. Ever. Generally, when a source says, "I am not authorized to speak publicly," that statement suggests that, given the proper authorization, she could speak publicly. But judges can never speak publicly about internal deliberations. No authorization can be given by any superior authority. Shame on those judges who spoke on background to the press.
