U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan spoke out Thursday against President Donald Trump's criticism of judges at a conference in Monterey, California.
Speaking to the crowd of lawyers and judges, Kagan said they should ignore the criticism and simply follow the law.
"Judges are fair game for all kinds of criticism, strong criticism, pointed criticism, but vilifying judges in that way is a step beyond and ought to be understood as such," Kagan said, according to NBC News.
The comments come as judges around the country are receiving death threats in the form of pizzas being delivered under the name of a slain son of a fellow judge.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has taken his own aim at judges, demanding they be impeached if they rule against his administration.
"In the face of these sorts of threats to an independent judiciary, judges just need to do what they are obligated to do, which is to do law in the best way they know how to do, make independent, reasoned judgments based on precedent, based on other law, to not be inhibited by any of these threats," Kagan added.
"I think we should be cautious about acting on the emergency docket," she said.
She noted that her biggest regret is that the high court failed to explain itself in those shadow docket rulings that left lower courts clueless on how to apply their rulings.
"I think more generally, it's the courts that are supposed to explain things. That's what courts do," she added.
