Ruth Bader Ginsburg Returns to Supreme Court After Lung Cancer Surgery: NPR

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the oldest, the tiniest and perhaps the best-known judge, returned to her place on Tuesday in the Supreme Court.

This 85-year-old liberal feminist icon was operated on for lung cancer at the end of December. Since then, she has been recovering at home. In January, for the first time in 25 years, she did not appear in court for her pleadings but participated in the decision of these 11 cases, based on written submissions and transcripts of arguments.

Coincidentally, after the January argument, the court had scheduled a "break-write" of a month, which would allow Ginsburg to have more time to recover from his home. Last Friday, Ginsburg returned for the first time to the seat of the Supreme Court to participate in the private conference of judges, the first conference of its kind held since mid-January.

Ginsburg worked hard to regain strength. Friends say that she walks more than one kilometer a day and that she works again with her coach twice a week.

On Tuesday, all eyes will be on her, but the tiny justice can be hard to see behind the tall structure that overlooks those mere mortals in the courtroom who are not on the "bench". Indeed, it is so small that viewers can often hear his voice but simply see the top of the head of "The Notorious RBG".

Doctors at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center operated in Ginsburg on December 21, removing one of the five lobes from his lungs. A few days later, she returned to Washington, DC, to recover. Doctors reported that the pathology report on his lung revealed no further evidence of the disease and no other treatment was planned.

Although this is the third Ginsburg cancer fight in 20 years, statistics indicate that patients with early-stage lung cancer, such as this one, have a cure rate of 70 to 80%. Ginsburg cancer was discovered accidentally, when doctors found an abnormality in CT scans taken after its fall and rib fracture last November.

Ginsburg has not concealed his desire to sit at the country's highest court until someone else who pleases him, President Trump, is no longer at the White House. She does not intend to retire any time soon. But she is 85 and she can see the Supreme Court move resolutely to the right.

The ideological turn of the far right comes as a result of the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy last summer. Kennedy, a centrist conservative, often has a decisive vote in very divided cases. He was replaced by Brett Kavanaugh, a much more conservative judge, and Trump's second appointed representative at court. This unique appointment means that the Conservatives now occupy five of the nine seats on the Supreme Court; any additional vacancy among the four liberals of the court would mean not a conservative majority of 5 to 4, but a majority of 6 to 3. In other words, there is still room for maneuver to lose a vote and still prevail in a given case.

The curators of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation have been planning and expecting this ideological shift for decades.

Indeed, Washington's legal circles are rumored these days that Justice Clarence Thomas, the most conservative member of the court, is thinking about retirement. Thomas, thereby securing a long-term hold on the seat of the Supreme Court occupied by Thomas. In fact, Trump invited Thomas and his wife to dinner at the White House and met Ginni Thomas and some of his fellow Conservative activists. According to reports in the press at the meeting, the president seems surprised by some of Ginni Thomas' group's ideas, including the idea that women are not qualified to serve in the military.

Trump may have unorthodox political views, but he clearly understands that the people he appoints to the federal courts of the land, not just the Supreme Court, will have an impact that will last much longer than his presidency. He has recorded a record number of appointments to federal appeal courts, courts that are just below the Supreme Court. He appointed 30 of these judges, more than any other president at this stage of his first term.