Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 78, said she won't be leaving the nation's highest court "anytime soon." (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)
Madeleine Morgenstern
The Blaze
7/2/2011
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats and liberals have a nightmare vision of the Supreme Court’s future: President Barack Obama is defeated for re-election next year and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, at 78 the oldest justice, soon finds her health will not allow her to continue on the bench.
The new Republican president appoints Ginsburg’s successor, cementing conservative domination of the court, and soon the justices roll back decisions in favor of abortion rights and affirmative action.
But Ginsburg could retire now and allow Obama to name a like-minded successor whose confirmation would be in the hands of a Democratic-controlled Senate. “She has in her power the ability to prevent a real shift in the balance of power on the court,” said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Irvine law school. “On the other hand, there’s the personal. How do you decide to leave the United States Supreme Court?”
For now, Ginsburg’s answer is, you don’t.
There are few more indelicate questions to put to a Supreme Court justice, but Ginsburg has said gracefully, and with apparent good humor, that the president should not expect a retirement letter before 2015…
The article continues at The Blaze.
Law professor Ann Althouse–a liberal–writes, “Wow! How much of this kind of moral pressure is being applied to the venerable Justice?” Read more at Althouse.
