Ruth Bader Ginsburg Plans to Stay on the Supreme Court for “At Least Five More Years”

Michelle Ruiz
Updated
At a time when each vacant Supreme Court seat threatens to upend the balance of the court for generations, the justice known as RBG says she intends to remain on the high court until age 90.

At a time when Supreme Court seats are stolen and vacancies are engineered by a Skulls-like network of chummy white men, here is some rare good news with respect to the high court: Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn’t intend to step down any time soon. “I’m now 85,” Ginsburg said on Sunday after a showing of The Originalist, an off-Broadway play about late Supreme Court justice, and close Ginsburg friend, Antonin Scalia. “My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five more years.” Her other colleague, Justice Anthony Kennedy, recently stepped down at 81 (and reportedly coordinated his departure with the Trump administration). In other news, men are actually the weaker sex.

Ginsburg, or as she’s commonly known on the Internet, “The Notorious RBG,” has backed up her claim to remain on the high court at least through 2020 by lining up law clerks for two more terms, legal blog Above the Law has reported. All of which is to say the 25-year veteran of the Supreme Court plans to outlast most of President Trump’s first term, giving Democrats a glimmer of hope that he’ll be unseated in 2020 and won’t receive another vacancy—not if RBG can help it. Ginsburg spoke on a potential rebalancing of power over the weekend, telling The Originalist director Molly Smith that what keeps her “hopeful” is the prospect that America will bounce back from the current Trump-sparked clusterf*ck.

“My dear spouse would say that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle—it is the pendulum,” Ginsburg said of her late husband, Marty. “And when it goes very far in one direction you can count on its swinging back.”

But Ginsburg’s plan to remain on the court shouldn’t be confused with partisan bias on behalf of the court’s left-leaning stalwarts. Unlike some people, RBG has already proved herself above that when she declined to step down during Barack Obama’s second term (albeit, with a Republican-led Congress), which would have ensured her seat would be filled by a president who shared her core values. This fierce conviction—which she has often employed to extend legal protections to women—has made the justice a pop-culture heroine, immortalized by the recent documentary RBG and the forthcoming film On the Basis of Sex, starring Felicity Jones.

Fans on Twitter rejoiced at Ginsburg’s comments, with RBG director Julie Cohen nodding to the justice’s legendary workouts (she still regularly does push-ups with her personal trainer), and one fan offering to make personal sacrifices: “Ruth Bader Ginsburg can have one of my kidneys, I’m not using it.”

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