Ruth Bader Ginsburg Talks Future on Supreme Court

If there's a third vacancy on the Supreme Court during President Trump's first term, it won't be the result of Ruth Bader Ginsburg stepping down. The 85-year-old justice said Sunday that her senior colleague, John Paul Stevens, stepped down when he was 90, so she thinks she has at least five more years, CNN reports. Ginsburg, speaking after a New York City production of The Originalist, a play about Antonin Scalia, said the dissenting opinions of her conservative colleague helped her form her own arguments. "Sometimes it was like a ping-pong game," she said.

Ginsburg said there was no chance of term limits being introduced for Supreme Court justices because that would require amending the Constitution. "Article 3 says ... we hold our offices during good behavior," she said. "And most judges are very well behaved." Ginsburg, who was appointed to the court by Bill Clinton in 1993, described herself as a "flaming feminist" and said the most important case of the last 20 years was the ruling that legalized gay marriage in 2015, the Guardian reports. Asked what keeps her hopeful, Ginsburg spoke of her late husband. "My dear spouse would say that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle—it is the pendulum," she said. "And when it goes very far in one direction you can count on its swinging back." (More Ruth Bader Ginsburg stories.)