There’s no such thing as a guaranteed Supreme Court vacancy

“The great ones get their backs up. They say ‘No one can do this job as well as I can.’”

Supreme Court justices do not go easily. With the presidential election nearing a climax, speculation has grown over new appointments to the country’s highest court. But imminent vacancies are far from guaranteed. The power to decide the nation’s law is difficult to relinquish. “The great ones get their backs up,” observed Georgetown Law professor Brad Snyder, author of a Felix Frankfurter biography and a scholar of the 20th century court, referring to retirement pressure. “They say ‘No one can do this job as well as I can.’” The historical pattern endures. Of the last dozen vacancies, dating to 1990, more than half were caused by a death or illness. Two of the last four justices to leave the bench died while serving – Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg – and most of the last dozen were at least age 80. “I’m getting old and coming apart,” Justice Thurgood Marshall told reporters when he announced in June 1991 that he would be retiring. He was about to turn 83.