Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Announces Hiring of Law Clerks Through 2019

Retirement Unlikely

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the de facto head of the progressive wing of the Supreme Court, has announced the hiring of law clerks through the 2019 term.

“The announcement bucks ongoing speculation that Ginsburg, 84, is nearing retirement,” Newsweek reported Friday. “Typically, justices planning on stepping down don’t hire all of their clerks for the upcoming term.”

Above the Law, which provides news and insights about the world of law, provided the list of Supreme Court clerk hires:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
1. Alyssa Barnard (Columbia 2015 / Nathan (S.D.N.Y.) / Katzmann)
2. Marco Basile (Harvard 2015 / Watford / Barron)
3. Susan Pelletier (Harvard 2016 / Garland)
4. Michael Qian (Stanford 2016 / Garland / Bristow Fellow)

“I can’t imagine what this place would be — I can’t imagine what the country would be — with Donald Trump as our president,” Ginsburg told The New York Times in an interview published in July 2016. “For the country, it could be four years. For the court, it could be — I don’t even want to contemplate that.”

Ginsburg subsequently apologized, noting that “judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office. In the future I will be more circumspect.”

Trump, naturally, attacked her on Twitter for the apology—advising “her mind is shot” and calling for her to resign. Ginsburg, thankfully, did not resign.

Months later, and nearly a year into the Donald Trump presidency, it isn’t Ginsburg’s mental state that’s being questioned—it’s Donald Trump’s. Early Saturday, just six days into 2018, the president asserted he is a “very stable genius” and noted that his two greatest assets were “mental stability and being, like, really smart.”

The claims, which Twitter users quickly noted were ridiculous, follow Michael Wolff‘s bombshell tell-all “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, as well as Yale University psychiatry professor Dr. Brandy X. Lee’s warnings to Capitol Hill lawmakers that Donald Trump is unstable, and is only going to get worse.

“We feel that the rush of tweeting is an indication of his falling apart under stress,” Lee told the lawmakers.

In July, Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the New York Times she intends to remain a Supreme Court Justice “as long as I can do it full steam.” Her voice is essential for LGBT equality cases that head before the nation’s highest court.

In December, the court reviewed the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, in which an anti-gay Christian baker refused to sell a same-sex couple a wedding cake. As NCRM has reported, the Supreme Court was seen as dismissive and skeptical of LGBT civil rights in the case.

While no final judgments should be made about how justices will rule, reporters who covered the case noted that Ginsburg was “extremely skeptical” of the anti-gay arguments.

As some on Twitter have noted:

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