Ginsburg picks NZ over Trump

Stuff reports:

A US Supreme Court judge could become one of New Zealand’s newest residents if Trump becomes president.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has strayed from the usual apolitical public stance of Supreme Court Justices to tell people just what she thinks of presidential hopeful Donald Trump.

“I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” she told the New York Times.

“For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”

But she did have a possible escape plan up her sleeve – one she said her late husband, tax lawyer Martin Ginsburg, would have liked.

“Now it’s time for us to move to New Zealand,” Ginsburg said, smiling ruefully.

Trump could be great for migration to NZ 🙂

In an interview with the New York Times in her chambers, Ginsburg talked about a stormy term and criticised the Senate for refusing to act on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.

Her colleagues have said nothing in public about the presidential campaign or about Obama’s stalled nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. But Ginsburg was characteristically forthright, offering an unequivocal endorsement of Garland, the NY Times reported.

The court has been short since Justice Antonin Scalia died in February, and Ginsburg said it was likely to remain short-staffed through most or all of its next term, which starts in October.

I suspect Garland may get confirmed by the Senate. If the polls continue to show Clinton well ahead, the Republicans will conclude better a moderate liberal like Garland than whomever Clinton would nominate if elected. Either way though it will see the end of a 30+ year Conservative majority.