Behind them, arms outstretched, either out of protectiveness toward his diminutive colleagues, or to derive support, loomed the wheezing figure of Justice Thurgood Marshall. The average age of these three men was over eighty. All the liberals at the Court believed that, one way or another, these Justices would leave the court during the Bush presidency. And just as surely, they believed Bush would, in a political payoff to the GOP's ultra-conservative wing, push the Court hard rightward. In short, in those November days, everything from Roe v. Wade to Miranda and a generation of civil rights progress felt irretrievably lost.
History repeats itself.
John Paul Stevens, now the dean of the Court's liberal faction, is eighty, a victim of prostate cancer, and has a wife who has been begging him to retire to Florida. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, seventy-five, is reputed to be bored with his job despite having had substantial success in moving the Court to the political right. He has reportedly told friends he would have called it quits had Bush or Dole won in 1992 or 1996. Sandra Day O'Connor, at the Court's political center, is seventy, a cancer survivor, and already a twenty-year Court veteran. And Clinton's first nominee, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, only slightly younger, is undergoing chemotherapy in a battle against colon cancer.