Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she has no plans to retire soon

In a rare interview with Elle Magazine, 21-year Supreme Court veteran Ruth Bader Ginsberg explained why she doesn't plan on going anywhere. 

|
Charles Dharapak/AP
Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg poses for a photo in her chambers at the Supreme Court in Washington, July 24, before an interview with the Associated Press.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has a message she'd like to make loud and clear to anyone wondering if she plans on stepping down any time soon: In a word, the answer is no.

Her reason, she explained in an an interview with Elle, comes down to the Senate. While Democrats currently control the chamber, they do not have the 60 votes needed to defeat a likely Republican filibuster to get a left-leaning justice onto the court.

"Anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they’re misguided," Justice Ginsburg said. 

Her comments come as a pointed reply to left-wing critics who believe she should step down now so President Obama can appoint another liberal-leaning judge in her place. If not, critics contend, the 81-year-old justice could die with a Republican president in office, paving the way for the pendulum of the Court to tilt further to the right. And while Obama may have two years left in office, critics worry that if the Democrats lose the Senate come November, getting a left-leaning judge onto the court becomes a monumental, if not impossible, task to achieve. 

"[Ginsburg] is dead wrong about something big," wrote the New Republic's Marc Tracy in December of last year. "And the big thing she is wrong about is insisting that she should not consider retiring soon, while she knows that a Democratic president and a Democratic-leaning Senate will be in-charge of replacing her." 

But Ginsburg is holding to her already stated intention to maintain her position – justices have lifetime appointments. 

"As long as I can do the job full steam…. I think I’ll recognize when the time comes that I can’t any longer. But now I can," she said. 

"Who do you think President Obama could appoint at this very day, given the boundaries that we have?" she said in the interview. "If I resign any time this year, he could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the Court."

A key topic in the interview excerpt was the court's shift to the political right in recent years, particularly on women's issues, and what Ginsberg sees as the primary catalyst in that shift: Justice Anthony Kennedy.

"To be frank, it’s one person who made the difference: Justice [Anthony] Kennedy," she said in the interview. "He was a member of the triumvirate used to [reaffirm] Roe v. Wade in the Casey case, but since then, his decisions have been on upholding restrictions on access to abortion." 

She also commented on her now-famous dissent she wrote after the court's 5-4 ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, which said the government cannot require closely held companies to provide employees with insurance that would cover birth control and emergency contraception, if they conflict with the employers' religious beliefs. 

In the dissent, Ginsburg notably wrote, "The exemption sought by Hobby Lobby and Conestoga would override significant interests of the corporations' employees and covered dependents. It would deny legions of women who do not hold their employers' beliefs access to contraceptive coverage." 

But speaking with Elle, Ginsburg said she did not think the Hobby Lobby ruling would be remembered as a significant decision from her time on the Court. 

"I think 50 years from now, people will not be able to understand Hobby Lobby," she said in the interview.

She added that, in her opinion, a reason for a lack of "pro-choice activity" in the country today is because the brunt of decisions restricting access to contraceptives and abortions, is felt primarily by poor women. 

"The impact of all these restrictions is on poor women, because women who have means, if their state doesn’t provide access, another state does." 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she has no plans to retire soon
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2014/0924/Justice-Ruth-Bader-Ginsburg-says-she-has-no-plans-to-retire-soon
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe