Op-Ed: Justice Thomas’ refusal to recuse himself is thumbing his nose at the law
An Op-Ed written by former Supreme Court nominee, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was posted by Mediaite writer and Supreme Court blogger, Adam Kirsch. The opinions written by Ginsburg, she was the sole dissenter from the United States Supreme Court in the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide.
In her commentary, Justice Ginsburg wrote, “It is not at all clear what might happen if a sitting Justice accepts or declines a Court invitation to participate in a particular case. That invite might be a mere invitation, a request, an invitation to appear as amicus curiae, or the invitation of a particular Justice. It might even come from the Court’s senior justice. We can make no prediction about such a matter because we do not know what those invited to participate might say. As a general matter, they may not always want to participate.”
From the article:
In a case that could have turned into a flashpoint, Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court, wrote a concurring opinion in support of a right to counsel in a capital case in which the defendant was not informed of his right to an attorney prior to the initial interrogation. After the Supreme Court issued its opinion, the defendant’s father paid some of the costs of the case to a lawyer and filed a complaint with the ethics committee of the Court that Breyer refused to recuse himself from the case and argued the Supreme Court should never have heard the case because it was so close to Breyer’s home state of Massachusetts. The Ethics Committee recommended Breyer’s recusal. When the Supreme Court later refused to hear the case, the Chief Justice, John G. Roberts Jr., and Breyer’s deputy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, were the lone dissenters to the Supreme Court’s ruling that the Sixth Amendment to the constitution guarantees criminal defendants the right to counsel for the