On Thursday, Justice Carol R. Edmead of State Supreme Court ruled that the board could not impartially decide the James group's fate.
"What I am asking you is whether anything you may have heard about that day would keep you from fairly and impartially deciding this case?
What are your feelings about the president and Inauguration Day, and will those feelings keep you from fairly and impartially deciding on a case and viewing evidence?" D.C. Superior Court Judge Lynn Leibovitz asked the 70 panelists.
John Cornyn (R-Tx .: "She must pR-Tx .er commitment to impartially deciding caShe based on the law, rather than based on her own personal politics, feelings, and preferences".
Yet it is only the latter that will foster the shared belief that judges act fairly and impartially in deciding the issues before them.
Simply stated, whether the Proclamation allows commercial transfer of leasehold interests is purely a question of law (not fact) to be decided impartially by a judge; it is not a question to be decided by executive fiat in which one person becomes the policeman, judge, jury and executioner.
The role of the commissioner as envisaged under the act appears to be as an independent umpire deciding impartially whether the public authority was correct to withhold the information.
Under the standard "death qualification" procedures used in many states, which were upheld by the Court today, judges examine prospective jurors before trial in capital cases and exclude "for cause" those who oppose the death penalty so strongly that they doubt their ability to decide impartially whether a convicted defendant should be executed.
The stonewalling has been bipartisan, from Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who testified that "a judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints," to Samuel Alito, who ducked questions about abortion rights by saying, "It is an issue that is involved in litigation now at all levels".
A judge sworn to decide impartially can offer no forecasts, no hints, for that would show not only disregard for the specifics of the particular case, it would display disdain for the entire judicial process".
Carmon described Ginsburg as "an institutionalist" who "believes in judicial integrity" but suggested that, between the justice's comments about the Senate's refusal to consider the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland and possibly Trump's claims that Judge Gonzalo Curiel and Muslim judges were too biased to rule impartially, she might have just decided to use her platform to sound the alarm.
