Ruth Bader Ginsburg Plans to Remain on Supreme Court through 2023

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she hopes to remain on the court for another five years.

“I’m now 85,” Ginsburg said, according to CNN. “My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90 [in 2010], so think I have about at least five more years.”

Ginsburg made the statement on July 29 in New York during a discussion following a production of “The Originalist,” a play about her late colleague and friend, Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia died in February of 2016.

Ginsburg, who described herself at the event as a “flaming feminist,” remembered Scalia by saying, “If I had my choice of dissenters when I was writing for the court, it would be Justice Scalia.” She characterized their professional relationship and discourse as akin to a ping-pong match.

When asked last October at an event sponsored by Equal Justice Works in Arlington, Va., if she was contemplating retirement, Ginsburg said, “As long as I can do the job full steam, I will do it,” CNN reported.

Ginsburg, who is marking her 25th anniversary on the Supreme Court this year, has hired law clerks for the next two terms, taking her at least through 2020.

Asked on Sunday night by “The Originalist” director Molly Smith what keeps her “hopeful,” Ginsburg quoted her late husband of 56 years, Martin D. Ginsburg, an internationally prominent tax lawyer who died in 2010.

“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,” she said.

A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., born to Russian-Jewish immigrants, Ginsburg has survived both colon and pancreatic cancer while serving on the court. She has two children and four grandchildren.

Nominated by former President Bill Clinton and confirmed to the Supreme Court in August of 1993, Ginsberg is the court’s oldest justice and among its most liberal. If she left the bench during President Donald Trump’s term, it would give him the opportunity to appoint a third Supreme Court justice. Such a move could likely shift the court’s balance of power for years to come.

Trump campaigned on a promise to nominate only conservative judges. So far, he has fulfilled that promise by placing Justice Neil Gorsuch on the bench, filling the seat vacated by Scalia, and by nominating Brett Kavanaugh to replace the retiring Anthony Kennedy.

Many Democrats and left-wing activists oppose Kavanaugh’s confirmation because they fear his conservative views could lead to the overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision that concerns abortion rights in the United States.

On Sunday night, when asked about the implementation of term limits for Supreme Court justices, Ginsburg said she did not support such a measure.

“You can’t set term limits, because to do that you’d have to amend the Constitution,” Ginsburg said. “Article 3 says … we hold our offices during good behavior.

“And most judges are very well behaved,” she added, to laughter.