'Very concerned': Ex-judge sounds alarm over reprimands from Supreme Court justices

In the past week, two U.S. Supreme Court Justices have spoken out to defend the legal profession. On Friday, MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace asked a former judge and Duke Law School professor just what that signals.

"How far outside of normal are we?" Wallace asked retired U.S. District Court Judge Paul Grimm of Maryland.

Grimm said that officials in both political parties have been guilty of criticizing judges they disagree with for the past decade.

"And the frequency with which that has happened has increased in the last half dozen years," Grimm estimated. "And that means that when you set a baseline for that being acceptable, then it can become easier and easier to do. I think that qualitatively and quantitatively, we're seeing something differently, now."

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The public statements from Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Sonia Sotomayor both said that such criticism has come to a point that they felt the need to comment, Grimm said. Roberts also spoke out at the end of last year, saying that threats over a legal ruling crossed a line.

"And then just about a month ago, [Roberts] came out with a statement that said, in the entire history of our country, it has never been the case that a judge would be impeached because of a disagreement with their opinion," Grimm cited.

The fact that the judges are speaking out so much in such a short time period is a change, Grimm said, because they typically "prefer to communicate in their decisions."

He noted that these comments happened at all "indicates that, qualitatively and quantitatively, things are much different now than they had been in the last 10 years."

Wallace pointed out that she and others have been critical of the abortion decision that rewrote the Roe v. Wade verdict, but that isn't what Grimm was talking about.

"But you've drawn the line in a different place," Wallace continued. "I mean, you're talking about threats, impeachment and ignoring the ruling — defying a ruling."

Grimm said the line for him is that "any criticism of a judge that undermines the rule of law ... is something that we should be very concerned about."

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