Throughout 2017, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 83, has been rumored to be considering retirement. This news stirs up reactions by many around the country, but none more than Democrats who know if Justice Ginsburg retires, it will leave another opportunity for Donald Trump to nominate someone who would further solidify an ultra-conservative Supreme Court majority, thus directing the course of the nation for decades—perhaps centuries.
Given the Republicans have the majority in Congress after an election, still declared by many to be illegitimate, the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would most likely bulldoze Trump’s second nominee into the highest court, as McConnell did with Neil Gorsuch this past year. Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell actually changed long-standing government rules to give the open seat left open by the death of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia, to Neil Gorsuch, after refusing to acknowledge former President Obama’s nominee of Merrick Garland.
Here is an excerpt of the NPR interview between news correspondent Nina Totenberg and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Among many subjects, they discuss the timing of Ginsburg’s biographical book release and the timing of her projected retirement.
RUTH BADER GINSBURG: My biographers would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided last October to flip the order.
TOTENBERG: Is that your way of saying you don’t intend to retire anytime soon?
GINSBURG: I will retire when it’s time. And when is it time? When I can’t do the job full-steam.
TOTENBERG: To read these pieces is to view the span of a professional career that’s profoundly changed the lives of American women, their families, their schools and their workplaces.
Ginsburg “running out of steam” doesn’t seem to be in any part of her character. Her contribution to withholding, protecting and amending the U.S. Constitution for the people, lasted decades and profoundly changed the course of American history as well as expanded vast possibilities for American women.
Here’s to many more years of sound and just rulings by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.