Credit: White House / Flickr.com
Last week Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg filed the principal dissent in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., arguing that the Supreme Court's conservative majority was wrong to rule against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's so-called contraceptive mandate. With that vote, Ginsburg once again demonstrated her status as the leader of the Court's liberal wing.
So how have American liberals expressed their gratitude to Ginsburg? At The Hill, Alexander Bolton notes that many liberals are "beginning to question whether it's time for her to go." Here are a few examples:
"There's a real chance the Republicans are going to take the Senate," said Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at the University of California, Irvine. "If the Republicans take the Senate, then the ability of President Obama to get a nominee confirmed for the court is going to be much more limited."… Elias Isquith, an assistant editor at the liberal website Salon, wrote that Ginsburg's Hobby Lobby dissent would be a fitting capstone to her career. "The celebrations of her brilliance fail to recognize that the best thing Ruth Bader Ginsburg could do for the liberal movement right now is, arguably, to call an end to a sterling and trailblazing legal career and step down from the court," he wrote…. Kent Greenfield, a law professor at Boston College, said Ginsberg should have retired last year to give Obama more leverage to appoint a new justice. "Her window was last summer," he said. "If she were to resign now, there's very little chance Obama could get someone as progressive as she is through the Senate in the coming months."
For her part, Ginsburg keeps saying she has no intention of retiring anytime soon.
Comments