Legal News

?I Don?t Agree With Any of Your Opinions, But I Hope You Get Well Soon.?

By Ashby Jones

Were we a Supreme Court justice recovering from surgery, we’re not sure how we’d feel about such a get-well message. Flattered? Angry? Humored?

But such is the message Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she received recently from someone. It’s one of several tidbits in a USA Today article out today on the justice, who spoke with reporter Joan Biskupic. (For the record, the quoted message serves as the ‘kicker’ to the article, so we never do find out how Ginsburg reacted to reading it.)

In the article, Ginsburg explained why, on her second day back on the bench, she attended President Obama’s televised speech to a joint session of Congress. “First, I wanted people to see that the Supreme Court isn’t all male. I also wanted them to see I was alive and well, contrary to that senator who said I’d be dead within nine months.”

That senator would be Jim Bunning, R-Ky., a member of the baseball Hall of Fame who’s recently made some news of his own — for his comment about Justice Ginsburg as well as other behavior. Three days before Obama’s speech Bunning said that Ginsburg would likely be dead from cancer within nine months. He apologized for the comment.

According to Biskupic, who spoke with Ginsburg on Thursday, the justice “appeared in fine form, getting up often to retrieve books to show a visitor. She has resumed her usual schedule of conferences, dinners and travel.”

Ginsburg, 76 shot down any speculation that she might soon retire, making clear that she has not retreated from her goal of matching the tenure of Justice Louis Brandeis, who served from 1916 to 1939. She joined the court at 60 in 1993, at about the same age as Brandeis did. He served until age 82.

She said Obama sent her a handwritten note when her surgery was announced. “It was expressing his hope for a speedy and complete recovery,” said Ginsburg, who met Obama soon after he was elected to the Senate in 2004.

Photo: AP

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 09, 2009 (boomark / email).