Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has not changed her tune on retirement in the past year, saying Wednesday she plans to stay for “a while.”
“My answer is, I will do this job as long as I can do it full steam,” she told Yahoo News. “When I feel myself slipping. When I can no longer think as sharply, write as quickly, that will be the time for me to leave the court.”
{mosads}Some liberals have urged her to retire so President Obama could nominate a successor while Democrats control the Senate.
When asked if the politics of naming a successor should factor into her decision, she said, “All I can say, I am still here and likely to remain for a while.”
She said she models her tenure after former Justice Louis Brandeis, who was appointed at 60 and stayed until he was 83.
“I expect to stay at least that long,” Ginsburg, 81, said. She would be 83 in March 2016.
The end of the court’s term last month brought another round of speculation about her retirement.
She is expected to be the next justice to step down. However, her answer to the retirement question has not changed recently.
In December, she said the most important question is, can you do the job.
“Can you think as well? Can you write with the same fluency? At my age, you take it year by year. I’m OK this year,” she said at the time.