Law professor Josh Blackman recently blogged about Justice Ginsburg’s interview with National Law Journal’s Marcia Coyle and has some harsh words:
One of the most jarring, and dare I say demeaning, lines in Justice Ginsburg’s interview with Marcia Coyle was not directed at any of the conservative Justices, but her own colleague on the left, Justice Sotomayor. Usually, the issue of opinion assignment is one best left for speculation. Maybe, we think a Justice asks for an assignment because he or she has a special interest, or expertise, or passion in a certain area. Or maybe an opinion was assigned to the swing vote to keep a majority together. These are the kinds of things I am most comfortable finding out years later when papers are released.
But Justice Ginsburg’s explanation for why Justice Sotomayor wrote the dissent in Schuette (which only RBG joined) was disquieting–Sotomayor was upset by press reports about her in Fisher, and wanted to show people what she really thought about affirmative action.
Read the whole thing here.