No one, including presidents, should criticize judges, but judges can say whatever they want about anybody, including presidents, and that's okay.
That, in a nutshell, is the astounding opinion of a noted jurist, the very judge just appointed by the Judicial Panel on Multi-District Litigation to take charge of the opioid litigation that local governments are leading, ostensibly to recover the costs they've incurred in responding to addiction.
Plaintiffs, defendants, and the attorneys are sure to have fun interacting with that outsized ego. They can expect to be criticized by him harshly and often, but, whatever they do, they must not criticize him, at least not publicly.
Seems fair enough to him.
“When you call into question the legitimacy of a federal district court judge, that’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed,” U.S. District Judge Dan Polster said to a committee of the Anti-Defamation League this past February – in a small municipality adjacent to Cleveland – in response to a question about President Donald Trump’s criticism of a judge who stayed ordered restrictions on travel from seven nations.
Trump at the time criticized the federal judge who stayed the travel restrictions, predicting the decision would be overturned, as it was by the U. S. Supreme Court.
“You start calling into question the legitimacy of someone, that undermines the whole system,” Polster said to the ADL affiliates.
In other words, it was okay for a federal judge to call into question President Trump's legitimacy and his authority to restrict travel into our country from nations deemed inimical to our interests, but Trump's questioning of the legitimacy of that judicial decision is inappropriate.
It was not, however, inappropriate for a second federal judge, i.e., Polster, to question the legitimacy of President Trump criticizing the first judge, even though that first judge subsequently had his “legitimacy” questioned by members of the U.S. Supreme Court and was overturned by a 7-2 margin.