Liberals to Justice Ginsburg: Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out

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 previous coverage of liberals urging Justice Ginsburg to get
lost already, see
here and
here.

For her part, Ginsburg keeps saying she has
no intention of retiring anytime soon.