Four-time cancer survivor Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealed what she described simply as “good” news Tuesday: After undergoing radiation therapy in August to remove a malignant tumor, she remains “cancer free.”
The 86-year-old Justice offered the significant update on her health status during a “rare interview” with CNN published Wednesday.
“I’m cancer free. That’s good,” Ginsburg told CNN Legal Analyst Joan Biskupic Tuesday. The popular progressive justice is starting off the year “sounding energized and speaking animatedly,” Biskupic stresses.
As Biskupic, a Supreme Court biographer, highlights, Ginsburg has repeatedly battled serious health issues in recent years, including multiple bouts with cancer.
“Last year at this time, Ginsburg was recovering from lung cancer surgery and missed several weeks at the court,” Biskupic points out. “She finished out the term in June. Soon after, she discovered a cancerous tumor on her pancreas, which was treated in August, and she resumed her active schedule.”
While Ginsburg chose to drop the notable health update during the interview with CNN, the real focus of the discussion was how “to limit the five conservative justices from setting new precedent over the dissent of the court’s four liberals,” as Biskupic puts it.
In its report on Ginsburg’s announcement of her cancer-free status, Politico provides some more details on the justice’s most recent battles with the disease, including that after being diagnosed with the malignant tumor in her pancreas over the summer, she underwent a three-week course of radiation therapy in August. Following the treatment, the Supreme Court issued a statement revealing that “there is no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body” and that no further treatment was necessary.
Ginsburg’s health has been of particular concern over the past year, Politico notes, her bout with lung cancer requiring her to miss oral arguments last January “for the first time” in her decades-long career. The malignant nodes in her left lung were discovered because of a fall in which she damaged her ribs.
“She was hospitalized again just before last Thanksgiving with ‘chills and a fever,’ but was released a day later,” Politico notes.
While Ginsburg’s health has raised alarms among progressives in recent years, Biskupic contends that the justice’s “iconic status today has only been enhanced by her resilience in surviving four cancer ordeals since 1999.”
Ginsburg has been in the news in recent months for multiple comments unrelated to her health, including slamming President Trump for calling on the Supreme Court to intervene in the Democratic Party’s impeachment campaign. “The president is not a lawyer,” Ginsburg told the BBC. “He’s not law-trained.”
But Ginsburg also agreed in early December to put a temporary administrative hold on Democrats’ efforts to gain access to Trump’s tax records, halting two subpoenas for his financial records.
The progressive justice has also made headlines over the last year for repeatedly praising fellow justice Brett Kavanaugh, whose hyper-partisan confirmation process was marked by evidence-less accusations of past sexual misconduct.
Related: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Says What Conservatives Have Said About Kavanaugh All Along