For reasons I cannot explain, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg retains her iconic status. Liberals generally, women especially, persist in putting her on a pedestal, as if she did no wrong. This need to enshrine her was in evidence before her death, and it continues still.
RBG, as she was widely known, is justly celebrated for her many accomplishments. She was a pioneering feminist and champion of equality long before she was appointed to the Supreme Court, and she was chief architect of a legal campaign against sex-role stereotyping. For her many achievements as a litigator, she was considered the Thurgood Marshall of the women’s rights movement.
Ginsburg did, however, have a problem evidenced long before she died in 2000, age 87, while still on the Court. Her problem was she refused to resign. She refused to resign though she was effectively asked to resign, and she refused to resign though her health was poor not just toward the end of her life but for two decades before.
In 1999 Ginsburg was diagnosed with colon cancer. In 2009 she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In 2014 she had a stent put into her right coronary artery. In 2018 she had a cancerous lesion on her lung. In 2019 she fractured three ribs – and her pancreatic cancer recurred. Of course, by then it was too late. By then she had no choice but to hang in and hang on, in the desperate but futile hope that she would outlast the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Obviously the very last thing the staunchly liberal Justice wanted was for Trump to name her replacement – which is exactly what happened.
It was kept quiet at the time. But since then it’s been reported that in July 2013, then President Barack Obama invited RBG to have lunch at the White House, in his private dining room. The purpose of the lunch was politely to probe Ginsburg, to explore whether she might be amenable to retiring. (By then she was, at age 80, already the Court’s oldest member, and a two-time cancer patient.) RBG was not. RBG was not in the least amenable to retiring. Not only did she not take Obama’s hint, she gave him the distinct impression that her intention was to continue to sit on the court, indefinitely.
Though it was not much discussed, it was clear even at the time that by clinging to her job Ginsburg was taking a risk. The risk that the Republicans would retake the Senate in 2014. (They did.) The risk that the Republicans would retake the White House in 2016. (They did.) And the risk that she would die while the Republicans controlled both the Senate and the White House. (She did.) Hence Trump’s appointment not long after she died of staunch conservative Amy Coney Barrett to fill Ginsburg’s seat.
Which brings us to one of the great ironies of recent American history: that one of the most important legacies of one of our most important feminists will be that Roe vs. Wade, which gave American women the right to have an abortion, is overturned.
But here’s the thing. In 2013 and 2014, around the time of Ginsburg’s lunch with Obama, it was not just the president but also friends, acquaintances, and former clerks who believed she should resign. They further thought that her refusal to do so was “terribly self-centered.” Trouble was that hardly anyone dared say so out loud, certainly not to her face. As former New York Times writer, Dorothy Samuels, put it, “I was struck that normally forceful advocates I spoke with would not express their dismay on the record while she was alive.”
In the end, then, to worship Ruth Bader Ginsburg was to enable Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Sad. Sad when people cling to power long after they should have surrendered it. Sadder still when no one has the guts to tell them to get out when they can do so with their dignity, and their legacy, still in tact.