Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Wednesday that the 2010 Citizens United ruling was the "most disappointing" decision in her 22-year tenure.
Speaking at an event at the Duke University School of Law, Ginsburg said she thinks the decision was the court's worst blunder "because of what has happened to elections in the United States and the huge amount of money it takes to run for office," The New York Times reported.
Ginsburg has a history of voicing her discontentment with that decision. Last year, she told a group at Georgetown University Law Center that she thinks "our system is being polluted by money" and that if she could overturn any decision made in the past 10 years, it wold be the Citizens United decision that expanded the idea of corporate personhood.
She was in dissent in the 5-4 decision, which lifted restrictions on political spending by corporations and unions. The decision also dramatically altered the landscape for campaigns by allowing for the creation of super PACs that can accept unlimited contributions from donors and spend that money on electing or defeating political candidates.
Ginsburg also spoke on Wednesday of a few other high-profile cases that continue to trouble her, such as the death penalty, which she said she was prepared to vote against, echoing a dissent she issued last month. She complained that the justice system is "riddled with errors, plagued by bad lawyers and subject to racial and geographic disparities," according to the Times.
She also criticized state laws that have imposed tough restrictions on abortion clinics, making it difficult for low-income women to get abortions.
"Reproductive freedom is in a sorry situation in the United States," she said. "Poor women don't have choice."
Touching on last month's ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, Ginsburg said that she would have written the decision slightly differently than Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, but ultimately decided against writing a separate opinion, as "it was more powerful to have a single opinion."
"That kind of discipline is to say, 'I'm not the queen and if the majority is close enough to what I think ... then I don't have to have it exactly as I would have written it,'" she said, according to The Huffington Post.
"On the whole, we think of our consumers - other judges, lawyers, the public," Ginsburg added. "The law that the Supreme Court establishes is the law that they must live by, so all things considered, it's better to have it clearer than confusing."
