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WASHINGTON – "How Do I Feel?", Asked Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Saturday, explaining the issue to the nervous Liberals and most of the 4,000 people who had lined up for hours to see her interviewed in a detention center. cavernous congress.
"This audience can see, she says, that I'm alive." The statement was greeted with a thunderous applause. "And I'm on the right track to be fine," she added as the room calmed down.
Judge Ginsburg was assisted as she climbed the stairs leading to the stage at a book festival sponsored by the Library of Congress. But she was relaxed, alert and cheerful in her discussions about her life and work.
The interview was part of an extremely busy public program for Judge Ginsburg after the Supreme Court announced last week that she had been treated for pancreatic cancer. The appearances gave the Liberals hope that she would stay on the ground longer than President Trump in the White House, allowing a Democrat to name his successor.
Judge Ginsburg, 86, was in Buffalo on Monday receive an honorary degree. She is scheduled to travel to North Little Rock, Arkansas on Tuesday. The demand for tickets was so strong that the event was moved to a sports arena with a capacity of about 18,000 people.
Nina Totenberg, an NPR correspondent who interviewed Judge Ginsburg on Saturday, said an additional 16,000 people were on the waiting list for her appearance in Arkansas.
Over the next three weeks, Justice Ginsburg will also appear in Raleigh, northeast of Chicago, twice in New York and Washington.
Appearances tend to follow a pattern: a standing ovation from a worshiping crowd, followed by questions from a friendly interviewer. Judge Ginsburg recounts some fine-tuned anecdotes about her previous career as a feminist professor and litigator, her marriage, the Supreme Court and the law. She lands a few jokes. She describes her unlikely friendship with Judge Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016.
But the tone was a little different Saturday in the light of his recent medical failure.
"I love my job," she said. "It allowed me to go through four cancer crises. Instead of focusing on my pain, I just know that I have to read a set of memories and reread a draft opinion. In one way or another, I have to overcome everything that happens in my body and focus on the work of the court. "
The last round of public appearances was scheduled before the announcement that Judge Ginsburg had undergone radiation therapy for three weeks for a malignant pancreatic tumor. "The tumor has been treated definitively and there is no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body," the court statement said.
It was the fourth time that Justice Ginsburg had had cancer after a surgery in December to remove two malignant nodules from his left lung, an operation for early pancreatic cancer in 2009 and a treatment for colon cancer in 1999.
Medical experts said the court's statement about Ginsburg's recent tumor was vague enough to make it difficult to accurately determine his diagnosis, let alone speculate on how his illness would progress.
But most experts agreed that the tumor, described as a localized malignancy, was likely a new lesion of the pancreas, rather than a recurrence of anterior pancreatic cancer or a cancer of one's own. another organ that had spread.
Although surgery is generally the treatment of choice for a pancreatic tumor, Judge Ginsburg seems to have opted for radiotherapy, which is generally less disruptive. The surgery can be grueling and tough for a person of the age and health of Judge Ginsburg.
A stent was inserted into Judge Ginsburg's bile ducts, according to the court's statement, stating that the tumor was in the head of the pancreas, according to experts. Surgery to remove this type of tumor is a complex procedure of four to twelve hours, with a high rate of complications and even death. It often leaves the patient with diabetes and leads to a long recovery period.
"It's a surgery that we do often, but you stay in the hospital for a week and you would not be 100% yourself before six to eight weeks and maybe three months," said Dr. Daniel Labow, president of the surgery council. oncology of the Mount Sinai health system.
The type of radiation therapy that Ginsburg J. had called ablative stereotaxic radiotherapy concentrated radiation on the tumor, limiting damage to surrounding organs, and generally disrupting patients' lives.
Judge Ginsburg is reluctant to miss work or reduce her public schedule. Despite her health problems over the years, she had never failed to argue over her 25 years of field presence until January, when she was absent from school. bench for two weeks after his lung surgery. She then participated in the cases that had been debated by reading briefs and transcripts.
On Saturday, Judge Ginsburg only discussed a recent decision of the Supreme Court, the ruling in June that determined that federal courts are powerless to fight partisan gerrymandering, the practice of drawing districts to vote to help the ruling party.
This was a 5-to-4 decision, and Justice Ginsburg and the other three Liberal members of the court were dissenting. She denounced a practice that she called rigged elections. "It's not like that a democracy should work," she said.
If Justice Ginsburg were to leave the court during Mr. Trump's first term, it would give him the opportunity to appoint a third judge. The last president to appoint more than two judges in his first term was Richard M. Nixon, who appointed four judges from 1969 to 1972. These appointments marked the end of the Liberal court headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren and created a conservative majority that remains to this day.
The current court is very divided, with five people nominated by Republicans and four Democrats. A third person named by Trump would not only further imbalance the equilibrium, but would also certainly move the ideological center of the court to the right.
On Saturday, Judge Ginsburg seemed determined to stay in office while marveling at her celebrity. "It's amazing," she said. "At the advanced age of 86, everyone wants to take a picture with me."
Carla Hayden, Librarian of Congress, said that she was inclined to present justice as "the Beyoncé of Jurisprudence". But Judge Ginsburg had a different idea, said Ms. Hayden, indicating a preference for "J. Lo. "
A little later, Judge Ginsburg said he met Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez in his judicial office. She shared with the celebrity couple the secret of her mother-in-law for a happy marriage: "It sometimes helps to be a little deaf."
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