It only took three years, but Associate Justice Elena Kagan finally found it within herself to condemn leftist threats against her Republican-appointed colleagues — and it’s not hard to guess why.
Speaking at a judicial conference in California on Thursday, the Obama appointee discussed the “threats to personal safety” and an “endangerment of judges.” She specifically referenced the (leftist-led) threats and demonstrations that came about following the leak of the high court’s 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
“That’s something that my court dealt with … a few years ago when Dobbs came down. When some of my colleagues, like my colleagues on the majority side, were confronted with protests outside their houses, including houses with children in them,” Kagan said, while also mentioning the gunman arrested for attempting to assassinate Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“That is scary stuff,” she added.
It’s nice to see Kagan criticize the threats and attacks against her Republican-appointed colleagues. It would have been even nicer had she emphatically done so back when it mattered.
As not-so-subtly indicated by Kagan herself during Thursday’s conference, the real reason for her sudden outspokenness on the issue appears to be her anger with President Trump and conservatives’ verbal criticisms of left-wing activists and judges’ weaponization of the legal system to stymie the president’s policy agenda.
Speaking in general terms, Kagan acknowledged that judges are “fair game for all kinds of criticism, strong criticism, pointed criticism, but vilifying judges … is a step beyond and ought to be understood as such.” The Obama appointee subsequently encouraged judges not to allow such pressures — which she dutifully classified as “threats” — to affect their jurisprudence.
“In the face of these sorts of threats to an independent judiciary, judges just need to do what they are obligated to do, which is to do law in the best way they know how to do, make independent, reasoned judgments based on precedent, based on other law, to not be inhibited by any of these threats,” she said.
Kagan’s remarks echo comments issued by her fellow Democrat-appointed colleagues, Associate Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Hellbound and Down 