Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took a hard look at the political landscape, saw a Senate that was looming as unfavorable to her leanings and summed up her fate: I can’t resign now — there’s nobody like me who could be confirmed, she said.
“Who do you think President Obama could appoint at this very day, given the boundaries that we have? If I resign any time this year, [Obama] could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the court,” Ms. Ginsburg, 81, said in an Elle Magazine excerpt released on Tuesday. “Anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they’re misguided.”
She also said that she’s completely able to “do the job full steam,” arguing that those who say her time to step down has come are wrong, Politico reported.
Ms. Ginsburg has been a vocal opponent of what she sees as a shift to the right on the Supreme Court — most recently with the Hobby Lobby decision, she said.
“I think 50 years from now, people will not be able to understand Hobby Lobby,” Ms. Ginsburg said in the excerpt, which notes her blistering dissent in the case. The ruling basically said that some corporations could use religious exemptions to refrain from providing abortifacients in their insurance plans to employees.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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