Ruth Bader Ginsburg Says She Plans on Staying on the Supreme Court Until She's 90
With the makeup of the Supreme Court bench currently in limbo, there’s at least one seat we can count on to stay filled for the foreseeable future. In an interview over the weekend, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she plans on staying in her position until she’s 90—giving fans of the Notorious RBG a small but much-needed assurance of stability for the next five years, at least.
After attending a performance of The Originalist, a play about her late colleague Justice Antonin Scalia, in New York City on Sunday, Ginsburg spoke to CNN about her plans for the future. “I’m now 85,” she said. “My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so I think I have about at least five more years.” In fact, CNN reports, the prolific justice—who was appointed to her seat in 1993 by President Bill Clinton—secured her law clerks for the next two SCOTUS terms earlier this year, guaranteeing that she’ll hold her position until at least 2020. Ginsburg went on to say that there’s no way she’ll be forced from her seat before she’s ready: “You can’t set term limits, because to do that you’d have to amend the Constitution. Article 3 says…we hold our offices during good behavior,” she said, joking, “And most judges are very well behaved.”
Ginsburg also spoke to CNN about the subject of the play, saying that Scalia, a conservative foil to her more liberal viewpoint, was her favorite sparring partner before his death in February 2016. “If I had my choice of dissenters when I was writing for the court, it would be Justice Scalia,” Ginsburg said. “Sometimes it was like a Ping-Pong game,” she continued, adding that going head-to-head with Scalia helped her further refine her arguments and opinions.
Though Ginsburg is clearly still going strong after 25 years as a Supreme Court justice, the rest of the bench has recently undergone a major shake-up. Following Scalia’s death, Republicans in Congress blocked President Barack Obama’s nomination for a replacement, allowing President Donald Trump to appoint the historically conservative Neil Gorsuch in his place in early 2017.
More recently, the relatively moderate Justice Anthony Kennedy announced he’d be stepping down from his post after 30 years on the Supreme Court, allowing Trump to appoint yet another, more-conservative justice and thus, critics worry, potentially creating a clear path to rolling back reproductive rights. As many Twitter users begged after Kennedy announced his retirement, Justice Ginsburg, a staunch champion for women, must be protected at all costs.
Related: Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Fight to End Gender Discrimination