Health of the 86-year-old justice has preoccupied the public as the court shifts to the right under Trump’s presidency

This article is more than 8 months old

This article is more than 8 months old

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is starting the year off “cancer-free” and has resumed an active role as part of the supreme court’s liberal bloc.

In a rare interview with CNN, the 86-year-old justice, whose health has preoccupied the public as the court shifts to the right under Donald Trump’s presidency, offered an update: “I’m cancer-free. That’s good,” she said, sounding “energized”, according to CNN.

The oldest member of the court has experienced a series of health scares recently. In November, she missed oral arguments in the court due to a stomach bug and was hospitalized later that month with a fever.

In August, Ginsburg underwent a successful treatment of a tumor on her pancreas, announcing that there was “no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body”. She was operated on for lung cancer in December 2018 and has survived the disease four times.

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The court is expected to take on several landmark cases this year, including ruling on a severely restrictive Louisiana abortion law and whether Congress can compel the release of Trump’s tax and financial records.

Oral arguments in the court will resume next week.

Should Ginsburg vacate her seat on the court, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, indicated that he would confirm a Trump nominee to replace her, despite blocking a nominee from Barack Obama during the 2016 election year.

In a July interview with NPR, Ginsburg made light of her health scares, recalling that a senator, after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2005, “announced with great glee that I was going to be dead within six months”.

“That senator, whose name I have forgotten, is now himself dead,” she said. “And I am very much alive.”