This article first appeared on the Overlawyered site.
On May 27, before a convention center filled with his followers in San Diego, presidential candidate Donald Trump chose to launch a lengthy diatribe against the local federal judge hearing the case against his Trump University.
Trump said Judge Gonzalo Curiel, of the Southern District of California, should recuse himself but cited no reasons other than that he had been appointed by Obama and had repeatedly ruled against Trump's lawyers.
In his rambling remarks, Trump also referred to Curiel as "Mexican": The jurist, previously the chief federal prosecutor for drug cases in southern California, was born in Indiana.
Stoking by repetition, as his crowd of thousands booed, Trump called the federal judge "a hater of Donald Trump, a hater. He's a hater," and said he should be placed under investigation by the court system. I wonder whether anyone will be shocked if the judge requests personal protection for himself and his family as the trial proceeds.
Obama's 2010 State of the Union remarks railing at the justices of the Supreme Court in their presence regarding Citizens United were bad. This is far worse: The case is still in progress, Trump is a party and the attack is on a single judge who will now find his task of ensuring a fair trial complicated. Trump, who speaks regularly around the country, chose to unleash the diatribe in the locality where the judge and others who will participate in the case, such as jurors, work and live. (For more, read David Post.)
Law professor Josh Blackman, active in the Federalist Society, writes as follows:
His jaw-dropping comments reflect an utter ignorance about what judges do, and amounts to a dangerous attacks on the fairness of our court system. Whatever negligible good will he built up by nominating a list of solid potential nominees to the Supreme Court was squandered with this scurrilous attack. Those who defended his selection process should immediately rebuke him for these baseless insults.…
I am speechless. Absolutely, and totally speechless. I was highly critical of President Obama's attacks on the Court. I cringe to think what will happen when the Supreme Court rules against [Trump].
This might be a good time to catch up, if you haven't, on the legal saga of Trump University, which I've been following for more than a year (when I first looked into it as part of my research into the work of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman).
Some coverage: Jillian Kay Melchior/NRO last July, Emma Brown/The Washington Post last September, Ian Tuttle/NRO in February, Roger Parloff/Fortune, Joe Mullin and Jonathan Kaminsky/ArsTechnica.
In the San Diego proceedings, one law firm ranged against Trump is Robbins Geller, descendant of convicted class-actioneer Bill Lerach's Lerach Coughlin, and the subject of some less than flattering coverage [on the Overlawyered site] over the years.
Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies.
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