Supreme Court justice Ginsburg ‘up and working’ after fall

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is already up and
working in her hospital room, a day after breaking three ribs in a
fall, her nephew said late on Thursday at the Hollywood premiere of
a film about her life.

Ginsburg, a ground-breaking liberal jurist who at 85 is the
oldest U.S. Supreme Court justice, was hospitalized on Thursday
after falling at her office at the court, a court spokeswoman
said.

“The last I heard she was up and working, of course, because
what else would she be doing, and cracking jokes,” her nephew
Daniel Stiepleman said at the premiere of the film “On the Basis of
Sex”, about a gender-based discrimination case Ginsburg tried as a
young lawyer in 1972.

“I can’t promise they were good jokes but they were jokes,” said
Stiepleman, who wrote the script for the film with input from the
justice herself.

Ginsburg, who made her name as an advocate for women’s rights,
is one of four liberals sitting on the court, to which she was
appointed in 1993 by then President Bill Clinton.

The court’s 5-4 conservative majority was restored last month
when the Senate confirmed Republican President Donald Trump’s
appointee Brett Kavanaugh after a contentious nomination process in
which Kavanaugh denied a sexual assault allegation from his
youth.

Ginsburg went home after the fall but experienced discomfort
overnight and went to George Washington University Hospital on
Thursday morning, court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said in a
statement.

Tests showed Ginsburg fractured three ribs on her left side and
she was admitted for observation and treatment, Arberg added. The
court is due to hear its next arguments on Nov. 26.

If Ginsburg were unable to continue serving, Trump could replace
her with a conservative, further shifting the court to the right. A
potentially dominant 6-3 conservative majority would have major
consequences for issues including abortion, the death penalty,
voting rights, gay rights and religious liberty.

As the oldest justice, Ginsburg is closely watched for any signs
of deteriorating health. She has bounced back from previous medical
issues and has fallen twice before at her home, in 2012 and 2013,
leading to rib injuries. She was treated in 1999 for colon cancer
and again in 2009 for pancreatic cancer, but did not miss any
argument sessions either time.

In 2014, doctors placed a stent in her right coronary artery to
improve blood flow after she reported discomfort following routine
exercise. She was released from a hospital the next day.

Trump went to the court on Thursday for a ceremony welcoming
Kavanaugh to the nation’s highest court. Kavanaugh was sworn in to
the lifetime job last month. The president sat with first lady
Melania Trump at the front of the marble-walled courtroom near the
justices’ mahogany bench, making no public remarks.

Some leading congressional Republicans, including Senate
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and outspoken Trump ally Senator
Lindsey Graham, attended. The event came a day after Trump fired
Jeff Sessions as attorney general; Matthew Whitaker, who Trump
named as Sessions’ interim replacement, participated.

CRITICAL COMMENTS
Ginsburg called Trump an egotistical “faker” when he was running
for president in 2016, in an unusual foray into politics by a
justice. Trump responded, saying her “mind is shot” and she should
resign. Ginsburg later expressed regret, saying “judges should
avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.”

She is a hero among many U.S. liberals, who revere her as “The
Notorious R.B.G”, a nickname based on a late rap star. A
documentary film about her, “RBG,” was released earlier this year,
and the Hollywood biopic will be released on Christmas.

The director, Mimi Leder, called described the film as
Ginsburg’s “origin story”, a term used in superhero movies.

“Our thoughts are with her tonight after her fall yesterday. We
send her our love and pray for a speedy recovery. I have it on good
word that she’s in great shape, and she is shooing the doctors out
of her room so she can work,” Leder said at the premiere. She told
Reuters her own information about Ginsburg’s health had come from
Stiepleman.

Ginsburg has helped buttress equality rights during her time on
the high court, including in sex discrimination cases.

Her career was shaped in part by discrimination she faced as a
young lawyer in a predominantly male profession: she was one of
just nine women at Harvard Law School in the 1950s, and later
struggled to find a firm that would hire her.

“She was making mistakes, finding out who she was, had a very
young family, her husband wasn’t very well,” actress Felicity
Jones, who plays her in the film, told Reuters on the red carpet.
“She was juggling a lot of difficult things at the same time but
always (had) this absolute commitment to the law.”

Ginsburg voiced support for the #MeToo movement against sexual
misconduct after Kavanaugh was accused of sexual assault by a
university professor, saying that unlike in her youth, “women
nowadays are not silent about bad behavior.”

Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation process convulsed the nation
just weeks before Tuesday’s congressional elections in which
Trump’s fellow Republicans lost control of the House of
Representatives but expanded their majority in Senate.

On Wednesday, Trump credited the fight over confirming
Kavanaugh, who was strongly opposed by Democrats, for the gains in
the Senate.

Reuters