WaPo-SCOTUS Election Update: Dont bet on Notorious RBG retiring if Clinton wins

[Fuzzy Bear]

Of course Ginsburg isn't going to retire.  Neither is Kennedy, or Breyer, or any of these folks.

These folks are all preoccupied about their "legacy"; how they'll be regarded in history.  A certain amount of that historical evaluation involves the number of landmark decisions they are the author of.  To a lesser degree, they are judged by the quality and quantity of all of their opinions, even if it is not the authorship of a landmark decision, because an opinion which does not concur fully with the reasoning of the majority opinion may well keep certain aspects of that opinion from being binding on similar cases, or may even limit the precedential value of a decision. 

Then, there is the role seniority plays.  If the Chief Justice is in the majority, he/she assigns the opinion to be written, and his/her means of doing this is part of how Chief Justices are evaluated.  (Warren Burger was gigged by historians by often reserving his vote in conference on tough decision, then voting with the majority after everyone else voted in order to control the assignment.)  But if the Chief Justice is in the minority, the Senior Justice in the majority assigns the case, and, if it's a case of historical magnitude (like Obergefell), that Senior Justice gets to assign the opinion, and gets to assign it to him/herself if he/she wants to.  Think of what that means for Anthony Kennedy and his place in history.  Think of what that would mean for Steven Breyer or Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Kennedy is building a legacy as a Giant of the Court, and while I don't particularly care for him, he's become a Justice of Historical Proportions and is only adding to it.  Breyer has a chance to be the new William Brennan.  And so on. 

William O. Douglas was severely incapacitated by a stroke and was told that he would not recover, but he fought resigning to the bitter end.  While his old antagonist, Gerald Ford (who once suggested impeaching Douglas at Nixon's behest) was to appoint his successor, Douglas voiced the belief that a Democratic President would do no better than Ford would in appointing Justices.  Hugo Black and John Harlan held on to the bitter end.  It's nothing new; Joseph McKenna held on despite being debilitated by a stroke and by senility.  The SCOTUS is sort of an anonymous branch at one level, but not when it comes to the reading and writing of opinions, and these folks all have Trumpian egos; you can bet on that.