Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quits Water-Skiing — No Plans To Resign From Supreme Court

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she is in good health, has no plans to resign and isn’t considering the identity or ideology of the president in making her decision.

“There will be a president after this one, and I’m hopeful that that president will be a fine president,” the 80-year-old jurist told the New York Times.

The mainstay of the court’s liberal minority said in a wide-ranging interview that she continued to be shocked at the “activist” bent of the top court’s effective conservative majority on issues like voting rights and affirmative action.

She said repeatedly that she will not consider resigning while President Obama is in the White House to allow him to presumably appoint a like-minded justice.

Court vote-counters say if a Republican president is elected in 2016 and gets to name her successor, the court could be fundamentally reshaped for years to come.

Ginsburg, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, said she intended to stay on the court “as long as I can do the job full steam.”

“I love my job,” she said. “I thought last year I did as well as in past terms.”

Ginsburg, who has survived two bouts with cancer, says her health is now good.

She insisted that her age has required only minor adjustments to an active lifestyle.

“I don’t water-ski anymore,” Ginsburg told the paper. “I haven’t gone horseback riding in four years. I haven’t ruled that out entirely. But water-skiing, those days are over.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.