Justice Elena Kagan recused herself from hearing the recent affirmative action case, Fisher v. the University of Texas, most likely because she had dealt with it before in her previous job as solicitor general for the Obama administration.

Ginsburg, in an interview Monday evening with CNN legal analyst and Supreme Court biographer Joan Biskupic, called Trump a "faker" and said he had "no consistency about him". She has certainly not lost her mind. In addition he has an ego.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary panel, said: "I guess (Trump) was upset because she pointed out that he lied about disclosing his tax returns".

"Having said she considers Trump unfit to be president, she should not be among those who rule upon the outcome of the election", he said.

"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 said in a New York Times interview published on Sunday.

She's a disgrace to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court, whose nine justices are nominated by the US president to lifetime appointments, is in the spotlight this presidential election cycle after Scalia's death.

"Can I tell you who is upset, her fellow liberals on the court who agree with her about Trump but have zipped their lips where as she hasn't", Napolitano said.

Appearing on Fox News's "Your World" with guest host Sandra Smith, Napolitano said, "She damages the reputation of the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest court in the land, when she speaks as if she's a member of one of the other two branches, Congress or the executive branch. I think I am questioning her mental capacity". But by evening, he apparently decided an apology wasn't enough and called on her to retire. There is a reasonable level of consensus around the parallel notions that, as an NPR assessment recently noted,"The media greatly enabled Trump, embracing the spectacle to give him vast swaths of real estate on air, online and in print" and, "Most egregiously, the media did not subject Trump's record to the kind of scrutiny other major candidates should receive".

The question of recusal aside, debate is also ongoing over the wisdom of Ginsburg's remarks. "For the court, it could be-I don't even want to contemplate that".

Trump on Tuesday night said Ginsburg should simply quit the bench.

"Her comments were obviously inappropriate", Cruz said in the Capitol. The White House spokesman laughed off Ginsburg's comments but, so far as I can tell, President Obama has not spoken about it directly. In a television interview, the Speaker said, "It's either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton". Instead, he wrote a 21-page memorandum about his decision to sit for the case, saying "Since I do not believe my impartiality can reasonably be questioned, I do not think it would be proper for me to recuse".

Stephen M. Griffin is a professor of constitutional law at Tulane University Law School. If the rationale for holding their tongues escapes even justices on the highest court, what sort of example will trickle down to the judges in courthouses across the country, where Americans seeking legal relief expect justice to be blind?