We've already seen why retiring in late 2015/early 2016 would have been a bad idea.

most likely yes, the part about her motivation / calculation is nothing but speculation on your part, in order to blame her for the situation she finds herself in. that'd be bad enough if it actually was true, but outright disgusting considering you can't possibly have an idea if it's even remotely close to why she made those decisions.

he hates the truth so much lmao

initially i had the same thought on his post, but it does give credence to the idea that RBG wanted to wait to retire under an HRC presidency (and hopefully a strong senate performance as well, people forget that Trump had a lot of downballot effects that people didnt see coming, ala pro-Trump candidates took a lot of seats people didnt see coming) so she could nominate a justice.

by the time she got sick she couldn't retire, as Obama was a lame duck. now she cant retire or she'll get replaced by a conservative and risk the balance on the SCOTUS.

really the only objectionable language in his post was that she wanted to keep her job, implying she likes the power.

This post was edited by thesnipa on Jul 15 2020 07:59am

Oh, I recognize that. Knowing that retiring then would have been bad is 100% hindsight. More of a "it's a good thing she didn't" POV.

lol ya, imagine her retiring under Obama because HRC was inevitable. Trump would have had 3 justices in 1 fucking term. Unreal shit, and it still might happen.

I will say that Gorsuch has turned out to be a fairly good jurist, although he should have never gotten the chance when he did, because turtle. I'm not sold on Kavanaugh yet, and I'm a little pissed at the midnight decision for which they both were in the majority regarding lethal injection using only sodium pentobarbital.

Replacing Scalia with Garland would have drastically shifted the court to the left. By contrast, replacing RBG with pretty much any other liberal judge would have preserved the current balance of the court, or even shifted it to the right somewhat. Thus, Senate Republicans had far less incentive to play hardball, break with norms, subject themselves to tons of public criticism and risk their own reelection just to prevent Obama from appointing RBG's successor.

And even if they had blocked the appointment of RBG's successor, the moment Scalia died unexpectedly in February of 2016, it would have been easy and advantageous for both sides to strike a deal: Obama nominates one center-left (Garland) and one center-right judge, so that the previous balance of the court (4-1-4) is retained (3-3-3) and neither side has to gamble hugely on the outcome of the presidential election later that year.





It's naive to think that Supreme Court justices don't put a lot of thought into the decision about their retirement and its timing. RBG's age and health history were unambiguous; it was undeniable that holding on through a Republican presidency would be a huge slog for her. It was equally undeniable that there would be a decent chance for her to not survive through the event of a two-term GOP presidency. RBG is far too smart to have been unaware of these considerations. The only logically consistent explanation for her decision to not seek the safe way out is that she either underestimated the probability of Trump pulling off the win, or that she really did not want to give up her post, or both.




Yes, admittedly, my language was a bit loaded. We dont know if she wanted to keep her job because she likes the power that comes with it, or because she just enjoys the job itself. You dont become a SCOTUS justice if law is not your passion and purpose in life.

Gorsuch has surprised a lot of people who got scared by the textualist/originalism label, me included!

Well, once Obama had turned into a lame duck, there was no reason for her to retire before HRC was actually sworn in. Realistically, the options were either retiren in late 2015 at the latest, or wait until February 2017.