Trump errs in attack on judge
As one who is in his 15th year of service in a quasi-judicial position, I take particular umbrage at Donald Trump’s unseemly attack on a judge based upon his ethnicity, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee asserting that the jurist should recuse himself from the case involving the allegedly bogus Trump University.
I am a member of a religious minority. No one has ever dared to suggest that I should not participate in any case involving an individual who is alleged to have disparaged the members of my faith nor would such a notion be favorably reviewed because those who sit in judgment of others are presumed in the absence of evidence to the contrary to be fair and impartial arbiters of the law. We are not placed in our positions without clearly having demonstrated our willingness and ability to act ethically and to facilitate a just result through using our heads rather than our hearts. Unless and until an arbiter is found to violate ethical tenets, the individual should be permitted to preside over all types of cases.
The astute individual knows that if Judge Gonzalo Curiel had acted in a manner which was seen as favorable to Mr. Trump, there would be no cries from the thin-skinned candidate for recusal.
The Trump attack on the independence of the judiciary provides another red flag which serves to warn thinking people of what a (ugh) Trump presidency would entail. I envision daily constitutional crises being fomented by a man who does not recognize the rights granted to us within it.
What will be the next Trump outrage? No one knows, but there is no doubt that one is brewing.
Oren M. Spiegler
Upper Saint Clair