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Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement announcement kicked off a partisan firestorm earlier this summer, as all signs point to the more moderate jurist being replaced with a hard right conservative. As the reality of two Donald Trump appointed members of the Court begins to set in, many liberal Court watchers have looked nervously at the aging left-leaning jurists and wondered if, before it’s all said and done, Trump will get an opportunity to pick three Supreme Court justices.
Amid this backdrop, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has opened up on how long she intends to serve on the Court. Yesterday, she attended a showing of The Originalist — a play about her friend and ideological adversary on the Court, the late Justice Antonin Scalia — and gave a few comments after the performance. That’s when she dropped the major news, that she intends to serve on the Court for another five years:
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“I’m now 85,” Ginsburg said on Sunday. “My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five more years.”
As she notes, there is certainly precedent for continuing her work on the Court. And really, only an act of God can stop her:
“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.
(There are some pretty notable exceptions to the idea of a well-behaved judge.)
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And as her law clerk hiring has suggested, she’s got at least few more years left in her.
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, and host of The Jabot podcast. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter (@Kathryn1).