Law Prof’s Advice to Ginsburg and Breyer: Retire and Do It Now for the Liberal Cause
Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy says it’s time for Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer to move on.
It’s the responsible thing to do, Kennedy writes for the New Republic. If the liberal justices remain on the court and President Obama fails to win re-election, “they will have contributed to a disaster,” he writes. “Both are, well, old: Ginsburg is now 78, the senior sitting justice. Breyer is 72.” Neither are likely to outlast a two-term Republican president if Obama loses in 2012, he says.
Kennedy offers what he sees as a cautionary tale. Justice Thurgood Marshall, known as “Mr. Civil Rights,” refused to step down until failing health led to his retirement announcement in 1991, allowing President George H.W. Bush to name his replacement. The new justice was Clarence Thomas, “who has become, ideologically, the most retrograde justice since World War II,” Kennedy writes.
Reason, the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal Law Blog noted the op-ed. AP says neither justice is likely to retire in an election year, and this year “there has not been even a whimsical rumor of a departure.”
