Right Juris

With a Barack Obama administration, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, age 75, is likely to take retirement (Reported to have Cancer, see update below), leaving the president-elect an opportunity to make his mark on the court. See photos, a video, and a biography below.

President-elect Obama will likely have two opportunities in his first term to appoint new justices to the Supreme Court of the United States, with the likely retirement of Justices Jon Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Both are considered part of the liberal wing of the court.

Ginsburg was born Joan Ruth Bader on March 15, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, so her age is 75. She was Nathan and Celia Bader’s second daughter. Her family called her “Kiki.” She graduated from James Madison High School. In high school, her beauty and competitive edge won her popularity and a position on the twirling squad. Perhaps her drive came from her mother’s battle with cancer, which led to death just days before her daughter would graduate high school.

Ginsburg’s academic prowess gave her all the scholarships she would need to make her way through college. She attended Cornell University where she graduated first in her class. Here she met her future husband, Martin Ginsburg. They later marry, and both enroll at Harvard Law School. Her husband graduated and accepted a job in New York. She transferred to Columbia Law School where she graduated at the top of her class. She became the first woman to serve on two major law school law reviews.

In 1963, Ginsburg joined the faculty at Rutgers University Law School. She spent much of this time working on feminist issues, and started working with the American Civil Liberties Union, where she was later served on the board and as general counsel. She later accepted a position at Columbia Law School, being the first woman to be hired tenured at that school.

President Carter gave Ginsburg her first judicial appointment, where she served in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals until appointed to the Supreme Court by Bill Clinton in 1993. She is the first Jewish woman, and only the second woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Her measurements are 5’ 01/2” height.

Ginsburg has lead an exemplary life, so any criticism of the associate justice is focused purely on her ideology as a judge. It should also be known that she has shown judicial restraint. She has described this approach as important to her role. Her biggest flaw as a justice is the stock she puts into the so called “right of privacy.” This flaw is the result of her underlying philosophy of jurisprudence, which places less emphasis on text and original intention, and greater emphasis on discovering the “best” moral interpretation, something akin to Ronald Dwarkin’s Interpretivism. It places great emphasis on the judge to decide how the law can be interpreted to give it the greatest moral application. Therefore, judges posses a power to make the law what they want it to be.

Even Ginsberg has shown restraint in this fashion, and has even criticized Roe v. Wade on the grounds that it stifled a popular democratic movement to change the law. She supports a woman’s right to choose, despite her criticism. This “right to choose” can only come from an interpretation of the constitution that relies on what ought to be (in some eyes) rather than by what the intentions of the drafters of the law.

We have to ask ourselves whether the questions of what is moral and good ought to be decided by nine judges, or rather by the will of the people. In writing the constitution, the founders sought to create a government for the people BY THE PEOPLE, not by the judges. If law is to be created and morals decided in a public forum, it is core to our belief in democratic society and to the principles of freedom, that the people play the largest role in making such decisions, via dialogue in the court of public opinion and through their representatives in the legislature. That is the system we established in this nation. Modern liberals are destroying the fabric of this basic natural right through the judges they appoint.

UPDATE

News agencies are now reporting that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been hospitalized for Pancreatic Cancer. She underwent surgery at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. The 75 year old associate judge is expected to remain in the facility for 7 to 10 days. The High Court Justices are expected to meet in private on February 20th to discuss the upcoming sessions. This will sure to be a topic of discussion.

See Video Here