Dammit Ruth, Go Sit Down

[Upgrade Dave]

http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/08/26/justice-ginsburg-resists-pressure-to-retire-i-love-my-job/



Justice Ginsburg resists pressure to retire: ‘I love my job’

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is fired up and not ready to go anywhere.

In a candid interview published Sunday in The New York Times, the judge vowed to continue her work, health-permitting, as the senior liberal leader on what she described as “one of the most activist courts in history.”

Ginsburg, a two-time cancer survivor, said she plans to keep plugging away as long as she “can do the job full steam.” While she declared her water skiing days officially over, the 80-year-old said she’s in good health now.

She noted she will not let the president’s schedule dictate her own, despite pressure from liberals who want her to step down before President Obama’s second term ends.

“I love my job,” said Ginsburg, who was appointed to the bench in 1993 by President Clinton. “There will be a president after this one, and I’m hopeful that that president will be a fine president.”

In theory, Obama would presumably appoint a left-leaning judge as a replacement. But if a Republican gets elected to the Oval Office in 2016, there’s a greater likelihood of a shift in the balance of power towards conservatives for years to come. As Obama’s term nears an end, the pressure on Ginsburg to retire may increase.

“If it’s measured in terms of readiness to overturn legislation, this is one of the most activist courts in history,” she said of the atmosphere under Chief Justice John Roberts.

The Supreme Court has issued rulings on landmark cases in recent years, including the Affordable Care Act and the Defense of Marriage Act.

She called the decision to effectively gut a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act “stunning in terms of activism.” And she said she regrets joining a 2009 opinion which helped lay the framework for June’s controversial VRA ruling.

For a long time, the fight against judicial activism has been a rallying cry for conservatives.

A recent study showed the Roberts court has been handing down conservative-leaning decisions about 71% of the time–the highest rate since 1953.

That’s not to say Ginsburg and her conservative colleagues on the bench don’t get along. While they may take different ideological approaches, she has been friends with Justice Antonin Scalia for more than 20 years. They share a love of the opera, have gone on vacation to India and their families have a tradition of spending New Year’s Eve together


Come on. One of the most important and long reaching decisions a President can make is his selection of Supreme Court justices. Ginsburg is 80 and a cancer survivor, it's past time for her to step away and allow fresher, younger eyes and minds to take that position.
Or what we could end up with in 2016, is an even older Ginsburg dying and a Republican President filling that spot with another Alito or Roberts or even worse, Thomas or Scalia.
If she still wants to fight for causes she deems worthy, great. Having a former SC Justice on your team is a good look but she's not thinking about anyone but herself right now.

Ego is a bitch.

 

[Greed]

Yea, she needs to sacrifice her happiness for the greater good.

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Yea, she needs to sacrifice her happiness for the greater good.

I don't give a damn about her happiness. She has a responsibility that's bigger than herself. When she chose to get into the public life, she signed on for such sacrifice.
This isn't "happiness", this is narcissism.

 

[Greed]

This is her best judgement, which isn't magically invalidated because Democrats might not win in 2016.

And specifically, what makes you think Obama could replace her with someone just as liberal with the Senate the way it is? It's much better for the left to have her leftism guaranteed for the next two years than have it watered down dramatically for the next 30.

 

[Upgrade Dave]

This is her best judgement, which isn't magically invalidated because Democrats might not win in 2016.

And specifically, what makes you think Obama could replace her with someone just as liberal with the Senate the way it is? It's much better for the left to have her leftism guaranteed for the next two years than have it watered down dramatically for the next 30.

Yes it is. It is invalidated for that very reason. This type of narcissism is common in all sectors. I've been saying Minister Farrakhan should stop being the face of the Nation of Islam for years and should have been grooming a public successor.

I don't have any reason to think Obama would replace her with someone as liberal but I know a Republican president would replace her with someone far more conservative.

But two more years is doable but what about 4? Or 6? Wealthy people live a long time.

Her own words show that her thought process isn't about guaranteeing at least one vote against the more conservative majority but her own feeling of entitlement.
She acknowledges the naked activism of the Roberts' court and she knows what happens if a Republican gain the White House in 2016 and yet, she's still there and has no plans on retiring?
I called it narcissism and that's what it is.

 

[QueEx]

Come on. One of the most important and long reaching decisions a President can make is his selection of Supreme Court justices. Ginsburg is 80 and a cancer survivor, it's past time for her to step away and allow fresher, younger eyes and minds to take that position.
Or what we could end up with in 2016, is an even older Ginsburg dying and a Republican President filling that spot with another Alito or Roberts or even worse, Thomas or Scalia.
If she still wants to fight for causes she deems worthy, great. Having a former SC Justice on your team is a good look but she's not thinking about anyone but herself right now.

Ego is a bitch.

I agree.

Shades of Thurgood Marshall, in reverse:

The fate of nations and millions of families, the course of history, could be forever altered by the death of an old man 95% of Americans could not name or identify. If he lived another four to six months, that could be a difference maker.

A close friend makes a similar argument/comparison with the retirement of Justice Thurgood Marshall in June, 1991 at age 82. The argument goes: had Thurgood not retired when he did, allowing George H.W. Bush to nominate and the Senate to confirm Uncle Clarence, the Supreme Court and the course of a lot of things in this country, including the Supreme Court's interference/decision in Bush v. Gore, would have been drastically different -- as less than a year of Thurgood's retirement, Bill Clinton ascended to the presidency.

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​

Interesting. Seems he wanted to retire in the Reagan years and just couldn't hold out any more, dying 15 months after leaving the court.

He even purposed a Weekend At Thurgood's scenario in case he died under Reagan.

It would have been huge if he held on another two years. That would have meant three nominations under Clinton's first term. Instead, it likely produced a second Bush presidency. It's impossible to reconstruct history with certainty but without Marshall's retirement and the negative consequences of it, there's likely no black president elected in 2008.

That was my thought, he had probably just reached the end of his line; and he just couldn't hold out, anymore. I believe that Thurgood had earned the rest -- though my friend still holds the view that he "sold out." I respect his view, but respectfully disagree.

I agree that life is often quirky and there is no telling how things would have turned out, but I do believe, somehow, it would have been different; for better or for worse.

The seeds of that thought were with me as I started looking into it... Part of me feels a man of his stature has a responsibility to hang on but that part was greatly outweighed by the reasonable part that says:

1) He obviously had valid concerns, dying in 15 months. If he lived 10-15 years, it's harder to excuse.

2) Clinton getting elected was far from sure-- certainly the oddest election of my life as a Reagan baby. Marshall might have even been an unintended force propelling Bush to a second term.

It's too extreme to call Marshall a sell-out when acting could've produced a worse outcome and he was on the verge of death.

I agree that life is often quirky and there is no telling how things would have turned out, but I do believe, somehow, it would have been different; for better or for worse.

Different is definite.

​

 

[Upgrade Dave]

That looked like an interesting discussion. I didn't know there were people tripping on Justice Marshall like that.
Justice Marshall died less than two years later so that was out of his hands. I just don't see why Ginsburg would let her situation get like that.

Yeah, this is like that in reverse.

 

[Greed]

Yes it is. It is invalidated for that very reason. This type of narcissism is common in all sectors. I've been saying Minister Farrakhan should stop being the face of the Nation of Islam for years and should have been grooming a public successor.

I don't have any reason to think Obama would replace her with someone as liberal but I know a Republican president would replace her with someone far more conservative.

But two more years is doable but what about 4? Or 6? Wealthy people live a long time.

Her own words show that her thought process isn't about guaranteeing at least one vote against the more conservative majority but her own feeling of entitlement.
She acknowledges the naked activism of the Roberts' court and she knows what happens if a Republican gain the White House in 2016 and yet, she's still there and has no plans on retiring?
I called it narcissism and that's what it is.

She should feel entitled since she's earned her position. She should shamelessly enjoy it for as long as she feels able to serve. Her responsibility is to the nation not the Democratic Party.

Besides, basically every thread on this board about the Republican chances in 2016 says they have none. Why are they wrong? Republicans are racist with dwindling demographics and bad policies. Why are you worried about some President Paul or Cruz all of a sudden?

 

[thoughtone]

She should feel entitled since she's earned her position. She should shamelessly enjoy it for as long as she feels able to serve. Her responsibility is to the nation not the Democratic Party.

Besides, basically every thread on this board about the Republican chances in 2016 says they have none. Why are they wrong? Republicans are racist with dwindling demographics and bad policies. Why are you worried about some President Paul or Cruz all of a sudden?

I'm not!

 

[QueEx]

Why are you worried about some President Paul or Cruz all of a sudden?

. . . could be the Chad

 

[QueEx]

Why are you worried about some President Paul or Cruz all of a sudden?

. . . could be the Chad

 

[QueEx]

Justice Ginsburg Is Wrong:
She Should Step Down
​

By MARC TRACY
December 18, 2013

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a great American. She was a pioneer in the women’s rights legal movement, co-founding its first journal and lecturing on the topic as Columbia’s first tenured female law professor (my father was in her first-ever class, and recalls her as a great teacher). She was the American Civil Liberties Union’s general counsel after founding its Women’s Rights Project. She and her late husband, a tax law expert, strove to have an equitable marriage—he was the cook, for instance, at a time when that was unusual, and divested himself of stocks when she became a judge so that she wouldn’t have to recuse herself from cases.

And, of course, she has been a Supreme Court justice for more than 20 years, only the second woman on the highest court, where she has been a stalwart liberal vote. A few months ago, she became the first justice to officiate a same-sex marriage. Evidence early this year from her dissent in a case that ended up neutering the Voting Rights Act suggests that, at 80, she’s still got it: “Just as buildings in California have a greater need to be earthquake* proofed, places where there is greater racial polarization in voting have a greater need for prophylactic measures to prevent purposeful race discrimination,” she noted (oh, snap).

So it pains me to say the following things. First: she is dead wrong about something big. And the big thing she is wrong about is insisting that she should not consider retiring soon, while she knows that a Democratic president and a Democratic-leaning Senate will be in-charge of replacing her. Which brings us to the second thing: she should retire soon.

Directly asked Tuesday about the commonly held theory that justices, who have lifetime appointments, should step down so as to maximize the chance that their replacements will be like-minded, she replied, “I think one should stay as long as she can do the job.” This follows her bizarre statements published two months ago that she need not worry because the next president, too, will be a Democrat: “The Democrats do fine in presidential elections; their problem is they can’t get out the vote in the midterm elections.”

As I reported then, it is relatively common practice for justices to step down at politically strategic moments. And why shouldn’t they? The justices, most of all, understand that they are quasi-political actors, and sometimes not even quasi. (Ginsburg dissented in Bush v. Gore.) Yet Ginsburg believes this shouldn’t factor into a justice’s decision. “Can you think as well? Can you write with the same fluency? At my age you take it year by year. I'm OK this year.”

The lifetime appointment system is a mess in dire need of reform (and the American public agrees with me). And I am really glad for Ginsburg. I’m glad she survived a bout with pancreatic cancer four years ago. I’m glad that even at 80 and despite outwardly frail appearance, she stays in shape and indeed is such an inspiration that there is a Tumblr—Notorious RBG—that testifies to her generally badass nature. I just think that in the meantime Ginsburg should go be a badass judge, with full pay, on the appellate circuit with “senior status.”


.

Where do I get the chutzpah? Partly it is from the knowledge that this is the way things work—that a justice appointed and confirmed in 2014 is likely to be more liberal than a justice appointed in 2018, or 2028, or any time when we do not know the composition of the presidency and Senate for sure—and that there will be untold cases on individual privacy, corporate speech and power, abortion, discrimination and voting rights, gun control, and who knows what else in the interim where we could use all the liberal justices we can get.

And partly it’s from Bush v. Gore, and other cases where the court has less blatantly but no less substantively made partisan decisions while hiding behind a phony, un-democratic veil of disinterested legal deliberating-cum-wizardry. I am sick to death of the unquestioning awe in which many Americans appear to hold the highest body of an entire third of the federal government because they are constitutionally disarmed from instead holding that branch accountable.

So let’s speak truths: Ginsburg is a liberal; Democrats will more likely get a liberal confirmed, Republicans a conservative. If Ginsburg cares about her legacy and her vision for the country, she will step down.

In fact, a modest proposal: she should step down explicitly for this reason, making clear that she wishes she could stay, and suggesting that her precedent should provoke serious discussion of common-sense constitutional reform—Supreme Court-level senior status, for instance—to make future such insanities moot.

And if that doesn’t work? Then 75-year-old, Clinton-appointed Stephen Breyer: you’re next.
​

SOURCE

 

[Greed]

Give 'em hell Ruth.

God, courts, country.

 

[MASTERBAKER]

The only one who will outlive RBG is Keith Richards!