No, that is not what I am saying at all. The importance her decisions have in this case as well as to the public interest are self-evident, and therefore should be reported. What I am suggesting is that there is very dangerous subtext surrounding framing her as an incompetent hack if it pre-emptively undermines the validity of her rulings both for or against the defendant. Both sides are looking to throw her under the bus at a moments notice no matter what she does, and threading that needle would be a challenge for someone with ten times her experience or tenure. The narrative foreshadowing has been quite clear in this regard, and I think we all ignore that to our own peril regardless of what side of the issue you fall on.

Let me put it to you this way: she already knows that when she rules against Trump she will be met with very real threats of violence, conversely Trump’s opposition will attempt to paint her as a traitor or patsy when she rules in his favor. It is a lose/lose proposition being reinforced by a zero sum game.

Again, this is a human being, and human beings are fallible. While it is easy or convenient to suggest that every single person who accepts a legal appointment should act as the perfect visage for the judicial system by being totally dispassionate, acting with complete impunity in upholding the letter of the law, and separating themselves from their humanity in the process that just isn’t realistic. Therefore, a better framework would be to attempt to influence or taint the outcome of this proceeding as little as possible while allowing the legal system to function without also combating the court of public opinion. This is also not realistic, I grant you that, but adding fuel to the fire doesn’t help.

Instead, I believe the ethically justifiable position is not to feed into the media sophistry, and instead to engage with the decisions in this case solely based on their merits. This is admittedly difficult to accomplish considering most of us are not legal scholars, but it should be the goal. In doing so we can continue to bring awareness to the fact that in the real world, even in the legal arena, there are rarely issues that can be perfectly distilled down into the kind of binary black & white positions that are attractive to our evolutionary programming.