A justice in the valley of the shadow of death

Last month, a friend down the road in Vero Beach lent me his copy of Jeffrey Toobin's book The Nine, a running narrative of recent Justices of the Supreme Court.

As it happens, just last week I finished Chapter 5 ("Big Heart") which included these passages:

*For one of the most accomplished lawyers and judges of her generation, Ruth Ginsburg had an astonishing ability to disappear in a crowd. She was tiny, for one thing, barely five feet tall and a hundred pounds, with the bearing of a little bird. But Ginsburg's presence was small, too. She had a shy, almost timid smile, and her eyes were hidden behind enormous glasses. Ginsburg's conversations were famous for long silences that sometimes left admirers (or clerkship applicants) babbling incoherently to fill the vacuum. She was sixty years old in 1993, older than most recent Supreme Court nominees, and the grooves in her personality were set, for better or worse.
At the time of the Clinton presidency, Ginsburg led a cosseted life in her apartment at the Watergate, but her voice still bore traces of her hardscrabble upbringing in Brooklyn. Ruth Bader's sister died in childhood, and she lost her mother to cancer when she was seventeen, the day before she graduated from high school. She went to Cornell, where she met her husband, Martin, and they both went on to Harvard Law School, where she was one of nine women in a class of more than five hundred students. There, shortly after the birth of their daughter, Martin was struck by testicular cancer. Through his long and difficult treatment, Ruth cared simultaneously for him and their child , attended class and took notes for both of them, typed his papers, and made law review by herself....

.... The Ginsburg nomination turned out to be an apt metaphor for the Clinton presidency as a whole. The process that led to her selection was chaotic, but the result was admirable -- the selection of a universally respected justice who reflected, with great precision, the moderate-to-liberal politics of the president who chose her. Indeed, more than any recent president since Johnson, Clinton was able to use his appointments to shape the Court in line with his own views. Still, even years later, he seemed embarrassed by the events leading up to Ginsburg's selection. [note: Clinton had tried, and failed, to find a candidate from a very long list of potential nominees in a process that was simply chaotic and amateurish. Indeed, after days and weeks and months, Ginsburg's name surfaced only after Clinton's staff, in a fit of desperation, called Attorney General Janet Reno for suggestions. Hers was the first name mentioned.] Clinton devoted less than 2 of the 957 pages of his memoir to her nomination -- one of the most consequential acts of his presidency.*

The Nine {pages 69 and 73}

Ruth Bader (her maiden name) Ginsburg is in the headlines with word that she has undergone surgery for cancer yet a second time. Her first bout was colon cancer ten years ago, which resulted an absence of several months while recovering and undergoing chemo- and radiation-follow-up care.

Her prognosis this time is much worse. Pancreatic cancer is one of those subsets of conditions with terrible statistical odds. Many experts give short-term survival rates in the low single-digits -- typically 9% or less.

When former Chief Justice William Rehnquist was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in 2004, his chances were given only slightly worse .

He died less than a year later.

Court observers have long considered the likelihood that Obama would be faced with choosing a replacement for one or, more probably, two replacements for departing Justices. Little did we suspect it would be her or that it would be so soon.

My heart goes out to her, her family and friends, and all lovers of a court that stands for freedom and fair play.

She championed both.

And all the while, cancer shadowed here life.... her parents, her husband, her colleagues, herself.

And the spectre of cancer, once again, has come knocking on her door.

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