Jeffrey Rosen interviews Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

In a new cover story for The New Republic, Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, sits down with Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for a wide-ranging discussion of the Court and her personal legacy.

Rosen and Ginsburg—friends since 1991 when Rosen was a law clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and Ginsburg was a judge on the bench—talked about “The Notorious R.B.G.,” her most important successes as an advocate at the ACLU, and “the worst ruling the current Court has produced,” among other things.

Below is a brief excerpt. Read the full interview here.

Jeffrey Rosen: When you were appointed, many people called you a minimalist. They said you were cautious. It’s only in recent years that you really found your voice and have become this liberal icon. What changed?

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Jeff, I don’t think I changed. Perhaps I am a little less tentative than I was when I was a new justice. But what really changed was the composition of the Court. Think of 2006, when Justice O’Connor left us, and the cases since then in which the Court divided five to four and I was one of the four, but would have been among the five if Justice O’Connor had remained. So I don’t think that my jurisprudence has changed, but the issues coming before the Court are getting a different reception.

JR: What decisions would have come out differently if Justice O’Connor were still on the Court?

RBG: She would have been with us in Citizens United, in Shelby County, probably in Hobby Lobby, too.

JR: Do you think she regrets her decision to retire?

RBG: She made a decision long ago to retire at age seventy-five. She thought she and John¹ would be able to do all the outdoorsy things they liked to do. When John’s Alzheimer’s disease made those plans impossible, she had already announced her retirement. I think she must be concerned about some of the Court’s rulings, those that veer away from opinions she wrote.

JR: Speaking of retirements, there are some who say that you should have stepped down before the midterm elections. How do those suggestions make you feel and what’s your response?

RBG: First, I should say, I am fantastically lucky that I am in a system without a compulsory retirement age. Most countries of the world have age sixty-five, seventy, seventy-five, and many of our states do as well. As long as I can do the job full steam, I will stay here. I think I will know when I’m no longer able to think as lucidly, to remember as well, to write as fast. I was number one last term in the speed with which opinions came down. My average from the day of argument to the day the decision was released was sixty days, ahead of the chief by some six days. So I don’t think I have reached the point where I can’t do the job as well.

I asked some people, particularly the academics who said I should have stepped down last year: “Who do you think the president could nominate and get through the current Senate that you would rather see on the Court than me?” No one has given me an answer to that question.

JR: Your health is good?

RBG: Yes, and I’m still working out twice a week with my trainer, the same trainer I now share with Justice [Elena] Kagan. I have done that since 1999.

JR: Do you work out together?

RBG: No, she’s a lot younger than I am, younger than my daughter. She does boxing, a great way to take out your frustrations.

JR: And what do you do?

RBG: I do a variety of weight-lifting, elliptical glider, stretching exercises, push-ups. And I do the Canadian Air Force exercises almost every day.

JR: What are the Canadian Air Force exercises?

RBG: They were published in a paperback book put out by the Canadian Air Force.² When I was twenty-nine, that exercise guide was very popular. I was with Marty at a tax conference in Syracuse. We stopped to pick up a lawyer to attend the morning program with us. He said, “Just a moment, I have to finish my exercises.” I asked him what those exercises were. He replied they were the Canadian Air Force exercises and said he wouldn’t let a day go by without doing them.

The lawyer who told me about the Canadian Air Force exercises stopped doing them years ago. I still do the warm-up and stretching regime almost every day.

JR: Are those the exercises you did when I met you at the Court of Appeals in 1991?

RBG: No. I was part of Jazzercise class. It was an aerobics routine accompanied by loud music, sounding quite awful to me. Jazzercise was popular in the ’80s and ’90s.

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