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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leaves No Doubt She's Staying

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is making it very clear she intends to stay where she is, despite calls for her to step down while the White House and Senate are in control of Democrats.
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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is making it very clear she intends to stay where she is, despite calls for her to step down while the White House and Senate are in control of Democrats.

Justice Ginsburg, who turned 81 in March, said in a series of interviews this week that she'll remain as long as she feels up to the demands of the position.

"Thank goodness I haven't slowed down," she told Reuters.

"Right now, I don't see any sign that I'm less able to do the job," she said to the Associated Press.

"At my age, we take it year by year, and I don't make any predictions about what the future will bring," she told Yahoo News.

Some prominent liberal legal scholars urged her to leave the court in time to let President Obama nominate a successor who could serve for several more decades, assuring her seat remained occupied by a liberal.

"Only by resigning this summer can she ensure that a Democratic president will be able to choose a successor who shares her views and values," wrote Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California at Irvine, in the Los Angeles Times in March.

Justice Ginsburg offered her most detailed response in an interview Thursday with Joan Biskupic of Reuters, a longtime Supreme Court reporter who has written biographies of Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Antonin Scalia.

"Right now, I don't see any sign that I'm less able to do the job."

If she had retired, President Obama probably would have chosen a compromise candidate, she said. Then she added, slyly, "So tell me who the president could have nominated this spring that you would rather have on the court than me."

After surviving two bouts with cancer, she said in previous years that her goal was to serve as long as Justice Louis Brandeis, who retired at age 82 after serving nearly 23 years on the Supreme Court. She'll begin her 22nd year when the court's annual term starts on Oct. 1.