Legal News

Justice Ginsburg Holds Forth on the Death Penalty, Equality, and Elephant Rides

By Nathan Koppel

One day removed from having to exit a United flight via an emergency chute, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg again grabbed headlines yesterday, sharing her views on such topics as the death penalty, discrimination against gays and lesbians, and elephant rides with Justice Antonin Scalia.

As we noted a few days backs, Ginsburg had to quickly exit her D.C.-to-San Francisco flight Wednesday after the pilot noticed some engine issues.

The 78-year-old jurist was unharmed and made it safely to her destination: UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, where yesterday she called for equality for gays and lesbians, according to this report from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Ginsburg cited the Supreme Court's 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down the state's anti-sodomy law, and told students that the court, "recognized that consensual relations between two people do no harm to anyone and cannot be subject to government prohibitions."

In response to a question about what she would like to accomplish in her remaining years on the court, the justice said she would like to revive the Supreme Court's ruling in Furman v. Georgia, which led to a four-year halt on executions, the Chronicle reports. The court in the case ruled that capital punishment constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

"I would probably go back to the day when the Supreme Court said the death penalty could not be administered with an even hand, but that's not likely to be an opportunity for me," Ginsburg said.

Ginsburg also expressed doubts that she would win confirmation to the Supreme Court today, given the scrutiny of the 24-hour news cycle and the partisan divide in Washington, the Contra Costa Times reports. When she was nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1993, she said, there were concerns that her affiliation with the ACLU would be an issue, but no Senator asked her a question about the affiliation.

"Someday we will get back to the way it once was," she said, "but it will take people on both sides of the aisle with sense who really care about making government work."

As for the elephant ride, she told students that she joined Justice Scalia astride an elephant during a trip to India, according to the Contra Costa Times.

"It was quite a magnificent, very elegant elephant," Ginsburg said. "And my feminist friends, when they see the photograph of Ginsburg and Scalia on this elephant, say, 'Ruth, why are you sitting in the back?'"

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on September 16, 2011 (boomark / email).