Boston University law professor and former clerk to Ruth Bader Ginsburg Jay Wexler joined Boston Public Radio on Friday to reflect on his time standing vigil by the casket of his former boss and to discuss the expected confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"I don’t have the words to describe it, but it was really amazing,” he said of his experience standing by Ginsburg’s casket at four in the morning. "The whole thing was a combination of strange, sad, and somehow eerily beautiful.”
Wexler also chronicled his experience in a recent piece for the New Yorker.
Listen: Jay Wexler On Clerking For Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Speaking on the Senate's Supreme Court confirmation hearings for his former associate, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, Wexler was less sentimental.
"I’m actually supposed to be watching my blood pressure,” he said. “This is actually not a lie. … And I can’t even take my blood pressure anymore, because it’s just too frightening."
"The hypocrisy of [Senators] praising Justice Ginsburg and recognizing all the things she did, at the same time that the Republicans are trying to smash Coney Barrett through this haze of COVID droplets, into Justice Ginsburg’s still-warm seat on the Court is just ... it’s just maddening,” he said.
Wexler is a professor of law at Boston University. His latest book is " Our Non-Christian Nation: How Atheists, Satanists, Pagans, and Others are Demanding Their Rightful Place in Public Life." He clerked for Justice Ginsberg in 1998.
