In the landscape of American jurisprudence, few voices have carried as much weight as that of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Throughout her remarkable tenure on the nation’s highest court, she demonstrated an unwavering commitment to legal excellence and principled reasoning. Her approach to the law was characterized by meticulous attention to detail, profound respect for constitutional principles, and an abiding faith in the power of well-constructed legal arguments to transcend the political moment of their creation.
During a 2016 interview, Ginsburg articulated her perspective on the durability of her judicial contributions with characteristic clarity and conviction. Speaking at a time when questions about her legacy and the future direction of the Supreme Court dominated public discourse, she expressed her belief that the majority opinions she had authored would withstand the test of time and resist efforts to dismantle them. This wasn’t mere speculation or wishful thinking on her part. Rather, it represented a carefully considered assessment based on her deep understanding of how the American legal system functions and how judicial precedent operates within that framework.
By 2016, Ginsburg had already accumulated more than twenty years of experience on the Supreme Court bench. She had participated in thousands of decisions, authored countless opinions, and witnessed firsthand how legal doctrines evolve and endure. Her statement reflected not only confidence in her own work but also a broader understanding of what makes certain legal opinions resilient while others prove vulnerable to reversal. She had spent decades studying the architecture of judicial reasoning, and she understood which building materials created structures capable of weathering storms.
The year 2016 represented a particularly turbulent moment in American political life. The nation found itself deeply divided along partisan lines, with fundamental disagreements about the direction of the country and the role of various institutions, including the judiciary. The Supreme Court had become increasingly central to these debates, with major decisions on healthcare, voting rights, marriage equality, and other contentious issues making headlines and stirring passionate responses from all sides of the political spectrum.
During this period, Ginsburg herself had transformed into an unexpected cultural phenomenon. Younger generations had embraced her as an icon, dubbing her “The Notorious RBG” in a playful reference to the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. Merchandise bearing her image proliferated, and her life story became the subject of books, documentaries, and even a feature film. This celebrity status was unprecedented for a Supreme Court justice and reflected both her personal appeal and the heightened attention Americans were paying to the Court’s composition and decisions.
However, Ginsburg’s statement about the durability of her majority opinions wasn’t motivated by or connected to this popular acclaim. She wasn’t speaking as a cultural icon or political symbol. Instead, she was offering a professional assessment grounded in her expertise as a jurist and her understanding of legal doctrine. The confidence she expressed came from her knowledge of how the law works, not from public opinion polls or social media popularity.
The timing of her remarks carried particular significance because the 2016 presidential election was approaching. Source The outcome of that election would determine who would make future Supreme Court appointments, potentially reshaping the Court’s ideological balance. Many observers worried about what such changes might mean for various areas of established law. Would new justices seek to overturn precedents they disagreed with? Would decades of legal development be undone? These questions created anxiety among those who valued the legal status quo in various domains.
In expressing her confidence, Ginsburg made an important distinction that revealed her sophisticated understanding of judicial power and influence. She specifically referenced her majority opinions, not the full body of her written work. This distinction matters enormously in understanding both what she said and why she felt confident saying it.
The Supreme Court produces several types of written opinions. Majority opinions represent the official judgment and reasoning of the Court. They require the agreement of at least five justices (a majority of the nine-member Court) and establish binding precedent that lower courts must follow. These opinions carry the full weight of judicial authority and shape American law in concrete, enforceable ways.
Concurring opinions, by contrast, agree with the outcome of a case but offer different or additional reasoning. They can influence legal thinking and may be cited by future courts, but they don’t carry the same authoritative weight as majority opinions. Dissenting opinions disagree with the majority’s conclusion and explain why. While dissents can be intellectually influential and sometimes presage future changes in legal doctrine, they have no binding effect when issued.
Throughout her career, Ginsburg wrote all three types of opinions. Some of her most famous and eloquent writing appeared in dissents, where she articulated powerful arguments against decisions she believed were wrongly decided. Her dissent in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), which struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act, became particularly well-known. Her dissent in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007) on pay discrimination ultimately led Congress to pass corrective legislation.
However, when discussing the durability of her work, Ginsburg focused specifically on majority opinions. She understood that these carried institutional weight that dissents could never possess. A majority opinion represents not just one justice’s view but a consensus among at least five members of the Court. It becomes the law of the land, binding on all lower courts and establishing the framework within which future cases will be decided. This institutional character makes majority opinions inherently more stable than individual dissents, no matter how brilliantly argued.
Ginsburg’s confidence in the staying power of her majority opinions rested on several interconnected foundations. First and foremost, she grounded her legal reasoning in constitutional text and established precedent. She wasn’t an advocate for revolutionary reinterpretations of the Constitution or dramatic departures from existing legal frameworks. Instead, she worked within the established traditions of American constitutional law, building upon foundations that previous generations of jurists had laid.
This approach reflected her broader judicial philosophy. Ginsburg believed in incremental progress rather than sudden transformations. She had learned this approach early in her career as a litigator, when she strategically brought cases designed to gradually expand legal protections against gender discrimination. She understood that dramatic leaps often provoke backlash and instability, while carefully reasoned steps forward tend to become embedded in the legal landscape.
Second, her opinions demonstrated extraordinary thoroughness and intellectual rigor. Ginsburg was known for her meticulous attention to detail and her comprehensive treatment of legal issues. She anticipated potential objections and addressed them preemptively. She considered how her reasoning might apply in different contexts and worked to ensure consistency and coherence. This thoroughness made her opinions difficult to dismiss or distinguish away in subsequent cases.
The process of crafting a majority opinion demands not only legal expertise but also diplomatic skill. A justice assigned to write the majority opinion must maintain the coalition of colleagues who voted with the majority. If the opinion’s reasoning strays too far from what some members of the majority can accept, they may withdraw their support, potentially turning a majority opinion into a plurality opinion with less precedential weight, or even losing the case entirely.
Ginsburg excelled at this delicate balancing act. She understood how to frame arguments in ways that could command broad support. She knew when to push forward and when to accommodate concerns from colleagues. This skill meant that many of her majority opinions reflected genuine consensus rather than bare majorities held together by fragile compromises.
Third, numerous opinions she authored weren’t decided by narrow margins. While the Supreme Court is often associated with controversial 5-4 decisions that split along ideological lines, many cases are decided by broader margins. When seven, eight, or even all nine justices agree on both the outcome and the reasoning, the resulting precedent gains additional stability. Future courts are far less likely to reconsider unanimous or near-unanimous decisions than those decided by the slimmest possible majority.
Ginsburg’s ability to craft opinions that attracted broad support strengthened the foundations of her work. When justices across the ideological spectrum agree on legal reasoning, they signal that the analysis transcends partisan considerations and rests on solid legal ground that jurists of different perspectives can all recognize as sound.
Central to understanding Ginsburg’s confidence is the legal principle of stare decisis, a Latin phrase meaning “to stand by things decided.” This doctrine represents one of the fundamental organizing principles of American law. It holds that courts should generally respect and follow previous judicial decisions, particularly those made by higher courts. The Supreme Court’s own precedents carry special weight—the Court rarely overturns its own previous decisions.
The doctrine of stare decisis serves multiple important functions in the legal system. It promotes stability and predictability, allowing people to order their affairs with some confidence about what the law requires. It ensures consistency in how similar cases are treated, supporting the principle that like cases should be decided alike. It protects the judiciary’s institutional legitimacy by demonstrating that judicial decisions rest on legal principles rather than the personal preferences of whoever happens to be serving as a judge at any given moment.
The Supreme Court has articulated various standards for when overturning precedent might be justified. Generally, the Court requires a showing that the previous decision was wrongly decided and that overturning it wouldn’t cause unacceptable disruption or reliance interests. The burden of proof falls on those seeking to overturn precedent, not on those defending it. This creates a structural advantage for existing legal rules.
Ginsburg understood these dynamics thoroughly. She knew that well-reasoned precedents enjoy substantial protection from the doctrine of stare decisis. While the Supreme Court does occasionally overturn its previous decisions—Brown v. Board of Education (1954) famously overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), for example—such reversals remain relatively rare. The Court treats its own precedents with considerable respect, even when individual justices might have voted differently had they been deciding the case fresh.
This institutional conservatism (with a small “c”—meaning respect for established practices rather than any particular political ideology) works in favor of existing precedents. A justice who wants to overturn an established precedent must convince at least four colleagues not only that the previous decision was wrong but that it was wrong enough to justify the disruption and institutional costs of reversal. This represents a high bar.
Ginsburg could point to the historical record to support her confidence in the staying power of well-reasoned majority opinions. The Supreme Court’s history demonstrates that many landmark decisions have endured for generations despite dramatic changes in the Court’s composition and shifts in the broader political climate.
Brown v. Board of Education, decided in 1954, declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Despite fierce opposition at the time and subsequent changes in the Court’s membership, Brown has never been overturned or seriously threatened with reversal. It stands as a cornerstone of American constitutional law, and its core holding is universally accepted today, even by those who might criticize aspects of its implementation.
Similarly, cases establishing fundamental procedural protections in criminal law, such as Miranda v. Arizona (1966), have proven durable despite criticism and despite the appointment of justices who might have voted differently had they been on the Court when the case was decided. While the Court has refined and limited Miranda in some respects, its core requirement that police inform suspects of their rights before custodial interrogation remains good law.
Cases protecting freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and other First Amendment rights have generally proven resilient across changing Court compositions. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964), which established important protections for press freedom in defamation cases, has survived for decades despite criticism from various quarters.
These examples illustrate a broader pattern: Supreme Court precedents that rest on solid legal reasoning and command broad initial support tend to become embedded in the legal landscape. They shape how subsequent generations of lawyers, judges, and citizens understand the law. They become reference points that future legal arguments must engage with rather than ignore.
Ginsburg’s own majority opinions often built upon this existing foundation of precedent. Rather than attempting to create entirely novel doctrines from whole cloth, she typically extended existing principles to new contexts or clarified how established rules should apply in particular circumstances. This incremental approach, working within rather than against the grain of existing law, makes reversal less likely. A future Court seeking to overturn such an opinion would need to unravel not just that single decision but potentially a whole interconnected web of legal doctrine.
To understand Ginsburg’s confidence in the durability of her majority opinions, it helps to consider the substantive areas where she made her most significant contributions. Her work on gender equality stands out as particularly important and illustrative of her approach.
Even before joining the Supreme Court, Ginsburg had established herself as the leading legal architect of constitutional protections against gender discrimination. As a litigator in the 1970s, she argued six cases before the Supreme Court, winning five of them. She developed a careful strategy of bringing cases that would incrementally expand the Equal Protection Clause’s application to sex discrimination, building precedent step by step.
Once on the Court, she continued this work, both in majority opinions and in her role as a consensus-builder among her colleagues. Her opinions in this area drew on constitutional text, precedent, and evolving social understandings of equality. They extended protections without making dramatic leaps that might have proven vulnerable to reversal.
Ginsburg also wrote important majority opinions on civil procedure, an area that might seem technical but has profound practical implications for how the legal system functions. Her expertise in this domain, developed through years of teaching and scholarship before joining the bench, allowed her to craft opinions that clarified complex procedural rules and made the legal system more accessible and fair.
In these and other areas, Ginsburg’s opinions demonstrated the characteristics that promote durability: solid grounding in constitutional text and precedent, thorough reasoning that anticipated counterarguments, and careful crafting that could command broad support among her colleagues.
While the 2016 statement represents perhaps her most direct expression of confidence in her majority opinions’ durability, Ginsburg articulated similar ideas on other occasions throughout her career. In various interviews, speeches, and public appearances, she returned to themes of judicial craftsmanship, the importance of reasoned analysis, and the distinction between law and politics.
In some contexts, she emphasized the collaborative nature of Supreme Court decision-making. She often spoke about the importance of building coalitions and finding common ground with colleagues who might approach issues from different perspectives. This emphasis reflected her understanding that majority opinions gain strength from representing genuine consensus rather than narrow victories.
In other settings, she discussed the relationship between dissents and future legal development. While her 2016 statement focused on majority opinions, she also believed that well-reasoned dissents could influence future courts. She sometimes cited Justice John Marshall Harlan’s lone dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which rejected racial segregation decades before Brown v. Board of Education vindicated his position. However, she understood the fundamental difference between a dissent’s potential influence and a majority opinion’s immediate legal authority.
Some observers have occasionally mischaracterized Ginsburg’s statements as expressing confidence in all of her judicial work or claiming that nothing she wrote would ever be questioned. These mischaracterizations miss the careful precision of her actual statements. She specifically referenced majority opinions—the work that carried institutional weight and established binding precedent. She understood the distinction between different types of judicial writing and calibrated her claims accordingly.
Ginsburg’s statement about her majority opinions reveals fundamental aspects of her judicial philosophy and her understanding of how the American legal system should function. At its core, her confidence rested on a belief that law can and should transcend partisan politics. She believed that good legal reasoning has an objective quality that judges of different backgrounds and perspectives can recognize and respect.
This doesn’t mean she thought law was entirely separate from values or policy considerations. She understood that constitutional interpretation involves judgment calls and that reasonable people can disagree. However, she believed that legal analysis operates according to professional standards and methodological constraints that distinguish it from purely political decision-making.
Her confidence also reflected faith in institutional norms and practices. The doctrine of stare decisis, the tradition of respecting precedent, the expectation that judicial opinions will be grounded in legal reasoning rather than personal preference—these institutional features of the American legal system create stability and continuity. Ginsburg trusted that future justices, even those who might disagree with her on various issues, would respect these institutional norms.
This faith in institutions and norms has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. Some observers argue that it reflects a naĂŻve view of judicial decision-making that underestimates the role of ideology and politics. Others counter that institutional norms remain powerful even when imperfect, and that abandoning faith in them risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of institutional breakdown.
Ginsburg’s statement also reveals her pragmatic understanding of judicial power. She knew that Supreme Court justices exercise enormous influence, but she also understood the limits of that power. Judicial opinions don’t implement themselves—they depend on acceptance and enforcement by other actors in the legal system and broader society. Opinions that rest on solid legal reasoning are more likely to command this acceptance than those perceived as political impositions.
In the years since Ginsburg made her 2016 statement, and especially following her death in September 2020, her words have taken on new resonance and prompted renewed debate. The subsequent shift in the Supreme Court’s composition, with the appointment of justices with different judicial philosophies, has raised questions about the future of various areas of precedent.
Legal scholars and commentators now examine Ginsburg’s major opinions to assess their vulnerability to reversal or limitation. They analyze the strength of her reasoning, the breadth of support each opinion commanded when decided, and how subsequent developments in law and society might affect these precedents’ stability.
Some of her core contributions to gender equality jurisprudence appear to rest on particularly solid ground. The basic principle that the Equal Protection Clause prohibits arbitrary discrimination based on sex has become deeply embedded in American constitutional law. While debates continue about how this principle applies in specific contexts, the fundamental concept enjoys broad acceptance across the ideological spectrum.
Other areas of law where Ginsburg made contributions face more uncertain futures. The durability of specific precedents depends on numerous factors: how recently they were decided, how controversial they remain, whether they involve constitutional interpretation or statutory construction, and whether they can be limited or distinguished rather than requiring outright reversal.
The question of whether Ginsburg’s confidence was justified ultimately cannot be fully answered yet. Legal doctrine evolves over years and decades, not weeks or months. Some precedents that seem secure today might be overturned tomorrow, while others that face current challenges might ultimately endure. Only time will provide a complete assessment.
Beyond the specific question of whether particular opinions will be overturned, Ginsburg’s statement carries a broader message about the importance of legal craftsmanship and rigorous reasoning. She believed that how judges do their work matters—that the quality of legal analysis makes a difference to outcomes over time.
This perspective stands in contrast to more cynical views that see judicial decision-making as purely political, with legal reasoning serving as mere window dressing for predetermined ideological conclusions. Ginsburg rejected this cynicism. While she acknowledged that judges bring their own perspectives and values to their work, she maintained that legal reasoning constrains and channels these perspectives in meaningful ways.
Her confidence in her majority opinions reflected her confidence in the work she had done to craft them. She had been meticulous in her research, thorough in her analysis, careful in her reasoning, and strategic in building coalitions. She had done the work properly, according to professional standards and institutional expectations. That foundation, she believed, would prove more durable than any political shift.
This emphasis on craftsmanship offers an important message for lawyers, judges, and legal scholars. It suggests that how we reason matters, that careful analysis and thorough argumentation serve purposes beyond merely winning the immediate case. Well-crafted legal opinions contribute to a body of doctrine that shapes future decisions and provides stability to the legal system.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 2016 statement about the durability of her majority opinions provides a window into her understanding of law, judging, and institutional continuity. Her confidence wasn’t rooted in arrogance or political power but in her deep knowledge of how the American legal system functions and what makes certain legal doctrines resilient.
She understood that majority opinions carrying institutional weight and grounded in solid legal reasoning tend to endure across changes in Court composition. She knew that the doctrine of stare decisis creates structural advantages for existing precedent. She recognized that opinions reflecting broad consensus prove more durable than narrow victories. And she had confidence in the quality of her own work—the careful research, thorough analysis, and strategic coalition-building that went into her majority opinions.
Whether her specific predictions about particular opinions prove accurate, her broader message about the importance of legal craftsmanship remains vital. In an era of increasing polarization and institutional stress, her faith in reasoned analysis and professional standards offers an important counterweight to cynicism about the judicial process.
Ginsburg’s legacy extends beyond any particular opinion or doctrine. She demonstrated through her career that rigorous legal reasoning matters, that incremental progress can accumulate into transformative change, and that judicial opinions grounded in solid foundations can withstand political storms. These lessons continue to resonate for anyone concerned with the rule of law and the role of courts in American democracy.
The ultimate test of her confidence will unfold over the coming years and decades as courts grapple with precedent, change, and continuity. Regardless of how particular doctrinal battles resolve, however, Ginsburg’s commitment to excellence in legal reasoning and her faith in the power of well-crafted opinions to transcend political moments stand as her enduring contribution to American jurisprudence. Her work reminds us that while law exists within a political context, it need not be reduced to mere politics—that careful reasoning and institutional respect can create islands of stability in turbulent times.
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