Noah Feldman, Columnist

Trump’s Supreme Court Comments Put Barrett in a Bind

The court’s newest justice has been backed into a corner and ought to recuse herself from any election rulings.

November 6, 2020 at 9:36 AM EST

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

An unprecedented situation for a justice.
Photographer: Bloomberg

Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal

LEARN MORE

If the Supreme Court takes on a case connected to the outcome of the presidential election, Justice Amy Coney Barrett will face the most important decision of her career: not how to vote, but whether to participate at all.

The situation is unprecedented. Never before has a president explicitly stated that he is choosing a justice so that she will be able to adjudicate that president’s own immediate re-election. And while there are arguments both for and against recusal, the argument for recusal is stronger.

Before it’s here, it’s on the Bloomberg Terminal

LEARN MORE