Left-leaning Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Sunday she plans to spend “at least another five years” on the Supreme Court, in remarks that may comfort liberals as President Donald Trump’s second nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, is likely to herald a rightward shift for the country’s highest court.
“I’m now 85,” Ginsburg said. “My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five more years.”
Ginsburg made the comments in a conversation after the performance of a play, The Originalist, about her friend and former colleague, Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016. Despite Scalia’s frequently conservative views, he and Ginsberg shared a friendship based in part around a love of theater and opera.
Answering a question about what made her hopeful given the events of recent years, Ginsburg said: “My dear spouse would say that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle — it is the pendulum. And when it goes very far in one direction you can count on its swinging back.”
Ginsburg also rejected the idea that term limits could be imposed on the Supreme Court. “You can’t set term limits, because to do that you’d have to amend the Constitution,” she said. “Article 3 says … we hold our offices during good behavior … And most judges are very well-behaved.”
She also declared herself a “flaming feminist,” and spoke about the law facilitating progressive change. “The genius of the constitution is it has become more and more inclusive,” she said. “Now, ‘we the people’ embraces all the people.”
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