Supreme Court drunk: replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is taking some flack for admitting that she was effectively drunk (in her words “not entirely sober”) during the State of the Union address. The eighty-one year old judge says she had some wine with her colleagues on the bench before the speech, and struggled to stay awake as the night went on. But the larger reality is that the Supreme Court is led largely by people around the age of eighty, meaning a group of senior citizens collectively have nearly limitless power over the United States – and some of them will begin to die off soon. So the question becomes, who replaces them?
The matter of which judges replace them on the bench is less vital in the big picture than which Presidents do the replacing. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the most vocal liberal voice on the bench who has been fighting for everything from equal rights for gays to keeping big money out of politics, may be planning to step down before Barack Obama leaves office, in the hopes he’ll replace her with someone equally as liberal. However, with the republicans now fully controlling Congress and intent on derailing literally everything Obama tries to do, it’s not clear whether any nominee could get approved. After all, the republicans have blocked the United States from having a Surgeon General for years now, with a deputy filling in.
On the other side of the political spectrum, seventy-eight year old Antonin Scalia, the conservative who is best known for ushering George W Bush into the White House over Al Gore in a disputed election, will look to remain on the Supreme Court until after the 2016 election and he’ll hope that a republican assumes the White House who is willing to replace him with a fellow conservative. Short of dropping dead, or being impeached for law breaking, the justices have the option to remain on the high court as long as they like.
The Supreme Court is not entirely a geriatric squad. Chief Justice John Roberts is sixty, considered fairly young by high court standards. Among the most recent appointees, Sonia Sotomayor is also sixty, while Elena Kagan is fifty-four. But it is largely a collection of people who tend to just get started with the business of ruling the nation at an age where most other people are looking forward to retirement. And so while Ruth Bader Ginsburg may be the only one getting drunk before government functions, it may be fair to argue that the entire Supreme Court is figuratively drunk as well.
@stableytimes