Ginsburg doesn’t want to envision a Trump win

WASHINGTON – Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she doesn’t want to think about the possibility of Donald Trump winning the White House, and she predicts the next president – “whoever she will be” – will have a few appointments to make to the Supreme Court.

In an interview Thursday in her court office, the 83-year-old justice and leader of the court’s liberal wing said she presumes Democrat Hillary Clinton will be the next president. Asked what if Republican Donald Trump won instead, she said, “I don’t want to think about that possibility, but if it should be, then everything is up for grabs.”

That includes the future of the high court itself, on which she is the oldest justice. Two justices, Anthony Kennedy and Stephen Breyer, are in their late 70s.

“It’s likely that the next president, whoever she will be, will have a few appointments to make,” Ginsburg said, smiling.

She didn’t sound as though she is preparing to step down soon and shows no signs of slowing down. Ginsburg said she has been catching up on sleep since the court finished its work last week before a busy summer of travel that will take her to Europe and, as is her custom, to see as much opera as she can fit in.

In the wide-ranging interview, Ginsburg reviewed the just-ended term during which she lost her best friend on the court and, partly as a result, was on the winning side of most of the high-profile cases. Justice Antonin Scalia died in February, depriving his conservative allies of a reliable vote and leaving eight justices to decide nearly five dozen cases.

President Barack Obama has nominated Judge Merrick Garland for the ninth seat, but Senate Republicans have refused to hold a hearing or vote on Garland’s nomination, arguing the next president should have the right to name Scalia’s replacement.

She said court majorities this term moved to shut down tactics used by opponents of abortion and of affirmative action in higher education in two major cases.

Ginsburg said she doesn’t expect to see any more such cases after the court upheld the use of race in college admissions in Texas and struck down Texas abortion-clinic regulations that the state said were needed to protect patients.

“It seemed to me it was a sham to pretend this was about a woman’s health,” rather than about making it harder to get an abortion, Ginsburg said.

She disputed reports that the court is taking on only relatively unimportant cases while waiting for a ninth justice.

“It isn’t so. We haven’t selected them with a view to dodging challenging cases. We take them as they come to us,” she said.

But she did suggest the court probably would not take up a major challenge to the death penalty any time soon. She joined Breyer’s opinion a year ago that called for considering outlawing capital punishment.

“There are only two votes so far to have asked for it so I don’t think it’s likely, if there is such a challenge, that it would get four votes to grant cert,” she said, using court shorthand. It takes four justices to vote to hear a case, or grant certiorari.

Another consequence of Scalia’s death was an increase in the number of dissenting opinions written by Justice Clarence Thomas, she said. Thomas wrote 18 dissents. Justice Sonia Sotomayor was next, with eight.

“Thomas always wrote a lot of dissents, but I think he was kind of making up for Scalia not being here. He wrote so many,” she said.