Ruth Bader Ginsburg blames Supreme Court colleagues for judicial activism

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg faulted her colleagues recently for creating a judicial atmosphere of activism, and she suggested she’s going to stick around and try to turn back that tone, for at least another year.

She said in The New York Times that she’s going to stay “as long as I can do the job full steam and that, at my age, is not predictable.” She promised to stay for at least a year, and “after that, who knows?”

The justice has faced some pressure from those in the liberal camp who would like to see her retire before President Obama leaves office so that her replacement could be the next liberal voice. But she’s dashed those hopes — repeatedly. And on Sunday, she said the despite her two run-ins with cancer, she’s not leaving any time soon.

Especially since the court has become so activist, she said.

“[This is] one of the most activist courts in history,” she said, as TPM reported. Speaking to the recent court decision striking portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, she said that “if it’s measured in terms of readiness to overturn legislation,” this court is a highly charged activist body.

Justice Ginsburg, a 1993 appointee of President Clinton, has come under fire in recent years from those in conservative camps who say she’s guilty of just what she’s charging her colleagues of — judicial activism.

In 2010, Justice Ginsburg gave a speech before a crowd at the International Academy of Comparative Law at American University, where she called for U.S. courts to turn to foreign and international laws to help interpret the Constitution.

Then, she argued that “from the birth of the United States as a nation, foreign and international law influenced legal reasoning and judicial decision making. Founding Fathers, most notably, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, were familiar with leading international law treatises, the law merchant and English constitutional law. And they used that learning as advocates in legal contests,” Opinio Juris reported.