Evidently Ruth Bader Ginsburg doesn’t like that her colleague Sonia Sotomayor has recently surged past her to become the most popular Supreme Court justice among denizens of the Internet left. Justice Ginsburg granted an interview to the New York Times over the weekend seemingly designed to shore up her credibility among her ideological fans and regain her rightful title as the Notorious R.B.G.
The interview is remarkable in how nakedly political Ginsburg is; she doesn’t even pretend to be in the business of “calling balls and strikes,” as her boss John Roberts once put it. And so she dutifully recounted her political positions on affirmative action, illegal immigration, and abortion to the Times.
But perhaps what’s most depressing about the interview is its sheer banality. One would like to think that our most august public servants—senators, presidents, certainly Supreme Court justices, would be—even if we don’t always agree with them politically—well, smart and interesting thinkers. So it was particularly disheartening to see Ginsburg trot out the banal old line about moving to another country if her preferred presidential candidate doesn’t win. (Ya know, like Alec Baldwin does every four years or so.) Should Donald Trump be elected president, it may be “time to move to New Zealand,” Ginsburg said. Oh well, give her a couple of points for creativity: At least Ginsburg didn’t say “Canada.”
