mx, someone had written:

“The main *legal* consequence that might attach to his tirade, at least the one that occurs offhand, is that Judge Curiel might hold him in contempt exactly as he would any other private litigant.”

If the contempt rules allow Judge Curiel to find Trump in contempt for his comments, then that would be “muzzling.”

I generally agree with your other points, although I think that it is fair to point out that Clinton appellate judges seem to be overrepresented when it comes to SCOTUS handing out summary per curiam reversals.

Who’s muzzling Trump? He said what he said (actually he made similar comments back in February too) and nobody has punished him or stopped him from making his comments. However, for a party to attack a federal judge on national television in the middle of a ongoing litigation simply because of the President who appointed the judge and the judge’s ethnicity goes against the general operating principles of the legal system. It is one thing to point out specific disagreements with the rulings or conduct of the judge (though this is generally best done through an appeal), but to impugn the judge’s integrity by ascribing a racial motive to his rulings, without any evidence, is inappropriate.

As Trump is running for public office, the public can, and should, take note of his behavior here.

I would agree, but I feel the judge left himself open to the “revenge” argument by including the “integrity of these court proceedings” sentence in the opinion. It seems there were ample grounds to release the documents anyway, so why give angry Trump supporters further reason to believe the process is unfair? Not that such angry supporters are likely to care much for logic given the frivolous nature of the arguments against Judge Curiel.

No, it’s not unfair, in fact as you point out Politico’s reporter appears to have drawn some sort of inference along those lines. Still, as I see it, by doing so the reporter was jumping to conclusions. The judge’s ruling (which followed a hearing held on Friday, which would place it before Trump’s speech unless it was a very late-night proceeding) marches through the relevant Ninth Circuit law on making litigants’ documents public, which was already highly tilted toward public access as against litigant privacy and recently became even more so. For reasons the ruling recites, that very liberal Ninth Circuit standard gives the public access claim a lot of traction under the circumstances of this case (in which, for example, the relevant trade secrets are of a defunct business with no visible prospects of revival).

As the Washington Post had also argued in its access motion, the Ninth Circuit’s standard also includes consideration of “whether a party benefiting from the order of confidentiality is a public entity or official; and (7) whether the case involves issues important to the public.” So in itself it is anything but strange that Judge Curiel would consider that issue in the balancing. What the judge does not say is whether the balance already weighed adequately in favor of the Post’s request anyway — my guess from his recital is that it did — or whether Trump shot himself in the foot with his remarks by undercutting his own possible claim that the proceedings were not of general interest to the public. The ruling’s wording doesn’t rule out that second reading, but even if it is right, “Trump’s outburst worked to undercut one of his own arguments” is a different proposition from “the judge ruled against him as revenge.”

I assumed because I read this in the Politico link:

Curiel said in his order Friday that Trump’s presidential campaign and his criticism of the court were reasons to overrule his objections to the release of so-called “Playbooks” describing Trump University’s operations.”

The order itself says:

Subsequently, Defendant became the front-runner for the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential race, and has placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue.

So I don’t think it’s unfair to raise the question.

It should not be assumed, absent some other indication, that the judge’s ruling came in response to Trump’s speech. As I understand it from the reporting, the ruling came in response to a Washington Post motion to make the materials public, a request that was pending (and may already have been decided by the judge but not announced) before Trump’s speech.

Maybe I don’t understand, but how does criticism of the court lead to having files unsealed? That feels like revenge on the part of the judge.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2016/05/donald-trump-university-judge-unseals-files-223687