If we needed another reminder of why it matters who is elected president and who gets to pick the replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia is important, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reminds us. In statements to CNN and the New York Times, Ginsburg called presumptive GOP presidential nominee a “faker” and warned of the danger of a Trump administration to SCOTUS and the country. As ABC News reported:

"He is a faker," Ginsburg said of Trump on Monday on CNN. "He has no consistency about him. He says whatever comes into his head at the moment. He really has an ego... How has he gotten away with not turning over his tax returns? The press seems to be very gentle with him on that."

She also told the New York Times that a Trump presidency would be unimaginable for the country and the Supreme Court.

"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 Times. "For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be -- I don’t even want to contemplate that." 

She jokingly added that she would move to New Zealand if he were to win the election in November.

She is entitled to her own political views. She is entitled even to use them in forming her court decisions. She is not entitled to use her lifetime appointment to attempt to sway Americans in an election. Her remarks show how far liberals on the Supreme Court and in lower courts have gone beyond interpreting the intent of the Founders in writing the Constitution to using the Supreme Court to advance a political and social agenda. To them the Constitution is a “living document” written in the sand, not carved into the bedrock of American democracy.

If Ginsburg wants to move to New Zealand, I will help her pack. After all she is one of the justices who advocates incorporating foreign law and foreign constitutions into SCOTUS decisions:

At the beginning of February, Ruth Bader Ginsburg traveled to South Africa, where she gave a public address on “The Value of a Comparative Perspective in Constitutional Adjudication.” She defended the Supreme Court’s recent practice of taking guidance from foreign law when interpreting the U.S. Constitution. She acknowledged that the practice has been criticized. She expressed concern at bills before Congress condemning the practice.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in a concurring opinion in Grutter vs. Bollinger, affirmed the use of racial preferences in university admissions, citing the fact that the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination temporarily allows for the “maintenance of unequal or separate rights for different racial groups.” Separate but equal?

Justice Ginsburg shares the view that the Supreme Court is a tool, not for ruling on the law and the Constitution as the Founders intended, but as a tool for social engineering incorporating foreign laws and opinions. It is a political tool, so why shouldn’t she be free to shape the political landscape?

The late Justice Antonin Scalia disagreed with her vehemently, believing in the original intent of the Founding Fathers, not in the political whims of the times. As Carlos Sadovi observed in the Chicago Tribune:

In a 2012 visit to the University of Chicago, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who had served as a law professor at the campus from 1977 to 1982, said he tried to frame his decisions by interpreting them with the original intent of the Founding Fathers…

According to University of Chicago Law professor Aziz Huq, Scalia's focus on "orginalism" will be known as his legacy. He said rather than focusing on individual cases, he changed the way the court approached the law by trying to return to its past.

"His contributions, with the way the justice system thought about the law, will be enduring," Huq said. "He felt that you have to go back to the original meaning of the Constitution, what the folks in the 1700s were doing and trying to get the meaning to those words they used."

As noted in The Resurgent, Supreme Court justices should be removed from the political arena, as well as not be bullied by the political elites:

Supreme Court Justices are supposed to be above politics -- above the fray, as it were. When President Obama publicly chided the Court in his 2010 State of the Union speech for ruling against his preference in the Citizen’s United case, Chief Justice Roberts correctly called him out.

With Ginsburg acting as a loose cannon, the Justices could lose the high ground they’ve always enjoyed when dealing with administrations on both sides of the aisle. The Supreme Court should be free to speak its mind without reference to political winds, and the price of that freedom is keeping its mouth shut in regards to party politics and candidates.

The decision by FBI Director Comey letting former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton skate on violations of the law that ensnared Gen. David Petraeus and others gave many who were reluctant to a reason to vote for Donald Trump for president. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has just provided another one, ironically giving a boost to the candidate she fears.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.