Via Breitbart comes speculation on Justices Ginsburg, Souter, or Stevens resigning soon. Justice Ginsburg's remarks at a Boston speech on Friday sparked the most recent discussions.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has hinted at a possible vacancy "soon" at the US Supreme Court, without indicating who would be leaving.
Speaking Friday at New England Law Boston's annual "Law Day," Ginsburg told students that the nine justices only take pictures together when a new member joins the high court.
"We haven't had any photos for some time, but surely we will soon," she said.
"The dynamic is a little different when someone leaves."
Ginsburg, who turns 76 on Sunday, declined to elaborate on her comments and did not take questions from reporters at the event.
She underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in early February but has returned to the bench.
Despite speculation that she might leave the court, Ginsburg has on several occasions expressed her intention to remain on the court for several more years. . . .
[S]he is one of five justices who are over 70 years old. Justice John Paul Stevens, the most liberal of the justices, is the oldest at 88. He turns 89 next month.
Stevens, Ginsburg or fellow liberal justice David Souter, 69, have been expected possibly to retire soon . . . .
Although Stevens has reportedly hired law clerks for the next term that begins in October, Souter has not.
As for Justice Souter resigning, the revelation — if it's even true — that Souter has not hired clerks for next fall would seem to be strong evidence that he has either decided to retire this summer or is at least strongly considering resignation. [UPDATE: Apparently, Justice Souter usually hires late, between February and April, so there probably is nothing oput of the ordinary here.]/p>
As for Justice Ginsburg, who has had serious health problems in recent years, my personal opinion is that there is a reasonable chance that she will leave the court over the next 18 months.
As for Justice Stevens resigning, my question is: Why? Stevens, apparently in good health and fully engaged in a job he seems to enjoy, has no obvious reason to decide to leave. I would be very surprised if Stevens retired anytime soon.
Article here.
Maybe Stevens is dedicated to staying on the Court until he dies, but the man is 88. He will probably not live to see the next Democratic President, and I'm sure he doesn't want President Palin appointing his successor. Maybe he's waiting until 2012, but he can't wait much longer.
Thanks so much for the info. I updated above.
Jim
There are a couple studies which say so---this one Stanford SCOTUS ideology Study
and I think the Epstein paper does as well Epstein Paper
P.s. Why was I banned? (I mean I'm not debating it, but it's hard to track my misdeeds.) Umm...and I seem to be IP banned when posting by wireless from my favorite bar, but allowed from home.
I guess they might also be counting on dem gains in '10 but that's a long way off.
Also, the last article you cite also notes this: "The report states that abilities based on accumulated knowledge, such as performance on tests of vocabulary or general information, increase until at least the age of 60."
The court is made up of 9 people who tend to be among the mental outliers in the legal profession. I think I'd be more interested in evidence showing that Supreme Court justices (or court of appeals judges) slow down significantly with age and are unwilling to admit it. I know that there are a few anecdotes out there, but if there's a more comprehensive treatment of the issue, I'd be interested in seeing it.
As "young" as they may be, Scalia and Thomas are at an age when people drop dead unexpectedly all the time. And they both belong to ethnic groups with above-average risk of cardiovascular disease. I don't see either outliving Obama, sadly.
President Reagan turned 70 during his first year in office. S.I. Hayakawa was elected to his first term in the Senate at age 70.
I agree that ability can decline with age--but as long as a justice is able to function, more power to him or her.
Trad and Anon,
What makes you think that Justice Stevens, despite his liberal jurisprudence (though well to the right of the justice he succeeded, William O. Douglas) doesn't want to "gift" his seat to a Republican President--since he was appointed to the federal bench by two Republican Presidents--and this suggestes that Justice Stevens is/was a Republican himself?
Remember, Justice White, despite his conservatism, waited until a fellow Democrat was in the White House before retiring.
These are political appointees more than anything else, and this is the chance the left has to put in place a very solid base for expanding their power greatly for decades to come.
They're not going to risk loosing an appointment like that to their opponents by waiting for Stevens to die when Obama might not survive (legally or physically) his term in office.
I agree that every individual carries his own force of mortality curve, and some people are still vital even at an advanced age. But let's face it, a justice in decline can off load a lot of his work onto his clerks and appear to be functioning. I think we need the extra protection of an age limit. Being still alive is not enough; we need justices in their top form.
Dave N:
Ronald Reagan was mentally in decline by age 70, and showed significant impairment by the end of this term. S.I. Hayakawa was an exceptional person, but let's face it, being a Senator is not as demanding as an executive type position. The Senator can also rely on his staff. I think we should also have an age cutoff for Senators too.
Nick
Besides, I imagine the founding fathers may have never considered a mandatory retirement age because people rarely in the 18th century lived past 50. ;) (Ben Franklin, I think, being the notable exception).
Interestingly, the other Justice Clinton got to replace, Blackmun, was appointed by Nixon but waited for a Dem. to retire. Stevens appears to be in a similar position.
So I wouldn't support a term limit for Justices. Which is ironic, since I helped draft dozens of legislative and executive term limits over twenty years.
On the other hand, I do often adjust arguments to appeal to matters in a particular background, including Justice Stevens's. I wrote to Justice Breyer's economics background, and to Justice Stevens's and O'Connor's experiences in politics. In an education case, you would keep in mind that Justice Kennedy's wife is a teacher. And so on. In a way, that's age-based, as you can't assume that they, for example, Twitter, but you can assume that they know the Reagan years as well as or better than I do.
That sort of targeting, by the way, is the biggest difference I see between the experienced practitioner and the newbie; the n00bs just think they need a good legal argument, while the pro knows that it needs to be written for five votes, and that the facts may be just as important as the legal reasoning. After all, you have mere seconds to convince at the cert stage.
I've had a similar problem occasionally. I think it has to do with using an ISP with dynamic addressing. That means you sometimes get caught with someone else's IP number. Just switch to a different ISP and you'll be ok.
One has to be careful using just the simplest life expectancy numbers. In the late 1700s American colonies, the average life expectancy was somewhere around 35 in the northern colonies - but for those who made it past their 20th birthday, the average life expectancy was around 60. So it was hardly exceptional or even unusual for people back then to live long past 50. Life expectancy in the southern colonies was lower due to more diseases like malaria, but not that much lower. Ben Franklin lived to 84, which was unusual but not unique.
BTW, Kennedy's replacement, again, before the end of the Summer, will be Caroline Kennedy.
The Earth belongs to the living dead, so no term limits.
Unfortunately the study does not explicitly give us the conditional age probabilities, so I had to work them and program the formulas Mathematica. I found that the curve seems to work for ages below 80 so here are the probabilities for some of the other SCOTUS justices.
Scalia (73) 78%
Stevens (88) 38%
Kennedy (72) 80%
Buyer (70) 83%
Souter (69) 84%
The data I used applies to white men, so Ginsberg and Thomas are not covered. The others are too young.
Some people will argue that SCOTUS justices are healthier than the the old people in the 13 countries covered by the study. To get some idea of how much this might affect the results, I de-rated the curve by 15%. Justice Stevens 38% increases to 44%. Once again this number really applies to 88 year old men, not Stevens as a specific individual.
It does look like that except for Stevens and Ginsberg, the rest of the court has more than 80% chance of surviving Obama's first term. Of course this assumes that Obama does not get removed from office for some reason before 2012.
If your entire judicial philosophy basically boils down to the expansion of the court's power to ensure that government has a say in everything, then why exactly would you want to retire. Power lust = power lust.
There's hope for you yet.
Cool math, thanks for doing it.
I picked Hayakawa as an example merely because he was first elected to the Senate at age 70. I could have easily chosen Frank Lautenberg, who was 79 when he RETURNED to the Senate after two years of retirement--or Konrad Adenauer, who was 73 when he became Chancellor of Germany and 87 when he left office.
My overall point was that some people are physically able to continue working well past the age when their contemporaries are retired.
Of course the flip side of the coin is this: What will Barack Obama do at age 51 or 55, when he is either involuntarily or voluntarily retired?
Governors have appointed themselves to midterm senate vacanies (Blago was considering it), so there's no general "you can't appoint yourself" prohibition principle.
1) Falling asleep in the Senate didn't turn me off to Hayakawa back in the 70s. As a Boy scout that year I visited the Capital and sat in the visitor gallery. It was so boring that I nearly went to sleep myself.
2) It is amazing how many Liberal judges get placed on the court by conservative presidents, but their are no conservative judges ever put forth by Liberal presidents. Seems someone has a litmus test.
3) Arlan Spectre as a supreme court justice, forget it. It would just be a play to get a democratic party filibuster proof senate. Also Caroline Kennedy can't replace ted Kennedy unless she claims residence in Massachusetts. At present her residence is New York.
4) Barrack nominating himself in case the 2012 election turns against him: interesting premise. But it would require the Dems maintaining control of the Congress in 2010 and they get 60% control of the Senate. Otherwise confirmation would be nearly impossible. Personnally, given how many rich and prominent people are beginning to voice concerns with the Obama policies they may loose the Congress next year.
5) Zarkov, you obviously accept the Daily Koz side that Reagan had Alz the day he took office as president given your comment he was mentally declining at 70. Of course that means he lived the longest with Alz surviving almost 25 years until his death in 2004 at 93. But since you accept this I can claim that Stevens has been in mental decline since 1990 when he stated boldly in Perpich Vs Dept of Defense that the 1792 militia act was virtually ignored for 100 years before it was repealed in 1901. That says the act was not being enforced by 1800 which leaves in serious question what the government was doing in the war of 1812, who they were going to draft in 1814, why most of the states in the union still had general militia musters until 1840 and it doesn't explain why federal records show the militia act as being replaced in 1903, not 1901.
Doesn't proper semantic analysis of this statement mean SHE won't be resigning? Otherwise, she'd say "the Court will soon" rather than "WE will soon"...
Cheers,
But surely not for lack of trying! Nixon and Reagan both tried three times to fill a seat with a solid conservative, but ended up with Blackmun and Kennedy. Ford chose Stevens as a compromise in the aftermath of Watergate, even though he still expected a conservative. And Souter, well, everyone expected him to be conservative.
White was probably the last conservative nominated by a Dem, but IIRC White and JFK were roommates at Harvard and there were little ideological expectations back then.
And with what sizable chunk of the population they now make up, I'm sure they'll swing the election so we get President Palin in 2012!
*Clinton nominated Breyer and Ginsburg only after getting approval from ranking Republican on the Judiciary.
I never asserted that Reagan suffered from Alzheimer's disease at age 70. But RR at 70 was not the same man as RR at 50. Mental decline with age is normal and common, but of course occurs at different rates depending on the individual.
Albert Einstein after age 40 was not the same either. His colleague, friend and biographer Abraham Pais (himself a physicist) writes that Einstein accomplished little in physics after age 40. See his biography Subtle is the Lord (some assert that "subtle" is a mistranslation from the German, the right word is "cunning"). On the other hand, the mathematician Paul Erdös was active and productive in this field (number theory) right into his 80s.
I'll take RR at 75 over Obama at 40 or George Bush at any age. I'm just saying that I saw him decline over the course of his presidency. He had memory problems, which was normal for someone his age. Thus I support a maximum age for SC justices as a general principle.
Zarkov a stooge for the Daily Kos. Go ahead-- make my day.
Maybe you're an ass when you're drunk?
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