Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, bless her heart, is finishing 25 years on the Court, and 38 years in total in the federal court system, having been appointed by President Jimmy Carter in 1980 to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, and then elevated to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993.
She has become a “rock star”, often called “the notorious RBG” in recent years, after the publication of a biography by a scholar in 2015.
She has survived bouts with colon cancer in 1999 and pancreatic cancer in 2009. and the death of her husband in 2010, days after their 56th wedding anniversary.
Through it all, she has stood up for the rights of minorities, women, gays and lesbians, the disabled, workers, consumers, environmentalists, and all other causes that fight against the enemies of civil rights, civil liberties, and social justice.
At age 85, she has had a stent put in her right coronary artery, and she has had a strict regimen of exercise for many years.
The question is whether Ginsburg can hang on and stay in office until 2021, when she would be 88 years old, and hopefully, a Democratic President could replace her after 28 years on the Court.
Ginsburg herself has said she plans to stay to the age of 90, the age that former Justice John Paul Stevens, now 98 and thriving, was when he left the Court in 2010.