Justice Ginsburg: Time to retire?

If Ruth Bader Ginsburg cares about her liberal legacy, she should step down from the Supreme Court—now, said Erwin Chemerinsky in the Los Angeles Times. The 81-year-old justice, having survived two bouts with cancer, is by all accounts healthy and mentally fit. But only by resigning by this summer can she ensure that a Democratic president will be able to choose her successor. The court now has four conservative justices, and if the next president were to appoint a fifth, it could tip the court into a radically conservative direction on such vital issues as environmental protection, same-sex marriage, women’s rights, and abortion. President Obama also will have the best chance of getting his nominee confirmed if Democrats still control the Senate—an advantage that could disappear with November’s midterms. Retiring now is the best way for Ginsburg “to advance all the things she has spent her life working for.”

Justice Ginsburg doesn’t need your advice, said Dahlia Lithwick in Slate.com. To suggest that this meticulous and passionate legal mind “doesn’t understand real-world politics” is insulting and a little sexist. “Do Ginsburg’s critics think she has forgotten her age, or her medical history, or the date of the upcoming election?” Ginsburg clearly “loves her work on the court,” said Garrett Epps in The Atlantic, and rarely misses a day. “If she were to retire, that center would drop out of her life.” She tartly told an interviewer last year that “there will be another president,” which sounds like she’s betting that Hillary Clinton wins in 2016.

That’s a very high-stake gamble, said Isaac Chotiner in The New Republic. If a Republican is the next president instead of Hillary, the real losers will be “women who want to control their bodies,” minorities who want to vote in Southern states, and citizens who don’t want their votes overwhelmed by unlimited contributions from billionaire donors and corporations. So Ginsburg’s personal feelings are “nowhere near the most important issue.” This uncomfortable argument only proves the need for judicial term limits, said Scott Lemieux in The American Prospect. If justices served for a fixed period instead of a lifetime term, it “would ensure that judicial appointments are evenly distributed among presidents,” and lower the stakes of each appointment. It would also relieve aging justices of the burden of knowing when to pack it in.

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