AP Interview: Ginsburg says she’s looking forward to being 1 of 3 women on Supreme Court

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Ginsburg says no plans to leave Supreme Court

WASHINGTON — After a period of dramatic change at the Supreme Court and in her personal life, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is looking forward to being one of three women on the high court for the foreseeable future.

Although some have speculated she might step down next year, the 77-year-old Ginsburg told The Associated Press on Tuesday she has no plans to retire anytime soon and still wants to match Justice Louis Brandeis, who stepped down at age 82.

Ginsburg talked with the AP as the Senate began debate on the all-but-assured confirmation of high court nominee Elena Kagan, chosen by President Barack Obama to replace John Paul Stevens. Last year, Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined the court after David Souter retired.

Ginsburg said the court’s demanding work helped her cope with the death of her husband, Martin, in June. They had been married 56 years.

She had two opinions to write in June and constant trips between the court, her home and the hospital. “I had no time to dwell on the loss that I knew was going to be sooner rather than later,” she said.

Her children persuaded her to show up in court the day after her husband died of cancer to read one of those opinions in a closely divided case because he would have wanted her there. “I knew he would,” Ginsburg said in her spacious Supreme Court office.

She keeps a large photograph of the man everybody knew as Marty on her bookcase. The folded American flag from his burial at Arlington National Cemetery rests on the window sill.

Ginsburg appeared to be in good health and good spirits, even with the strain of her husband’s death and a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2009. She underwent surgery and chemotherapy for the cancer and was hospitalized on two other occasions last year but is maintaining an active travel schedule that is taking her across the country at least twice this summer.

There has been persistent speculation that Ginsburg could retire next year and give Obama his third vacancy to fill in as many years.

Next year probably would be Obama’s last chance to get a Supreme Court nominee through the Senate before the 2012 presidential election. There hasn’t been an election-year Supreme Court retirement in more than 40 years because, among other things, the opposition party in the Senate is inclined to wait for election results in the hope that it will capture the White House.

Ginsburg sought to tamp down the speculation in a lighthearted manner.

She mentioned a painting that usually hangs in her office by the German emigre artist Josef Albers. The painting is part of a traveling exhibition and is supposed to be returned in 2012.

“If anyone asks how long I’ll be here, at least until my Albers comes back,” she said.

Ginsburg also spoke often of Sandra Day O’Connor, who stepped down from the court in 2006 after 25 years. O’Connor’s retirement briefly left Ginsburg as the only female justice and she made clear she didn’t like it.

Now two women have been nominated to the court in the past two years. With Kagan’s confirmation, there would be three women serving together on the Supreme Court for the first time. “To me, it’s one of the most exhilarating developments,” Ginsburg said.

Ginsburg pointed out that she also is the oldest justice, with the retirement of the 90-year-old Stevens. Next in line is her close friend and ideological opposite, 74-year-old Antonin Scalia.

Ginsburg observed that she placed her mahogany desk in her recently renovated office the same way Scalia did in his.

But the similarities end there, Ginsburg said gesturing at the many paintings that hang on the walls. “He would not put up any of my art, and I wouldn’t put up with his elk or whatever it is,” she said of the hunting trophies Scalia displays.