Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is reminding critics that she’s not dead yet.
“There was a senator, I think it was after my pancreatic cancer, who announced, with great glee, that I was going to be dead within six months. That senator, whose name I have forgotten, is now dead himself, and I am very much alive,” Ginsburg told NPR in an interview published Wednesday.
And the 86-year-old justice, who survived a string of health scares, including most recently when she was treated in December for lung cancer, said she intends to stay much longer on the bench.
She said that she told Justice John Paul Stevens her plans before his death earlier this month at the age of 99.
“I said that my dream is that I will stay at the court as long as he did … And his immediate response was, ‘Stay longer!’” she said.
The justice, known to fans as “the Notorious RBG,” also said she’s not on board with Democratic 2020 candidates’ suggestions to add to the number of seats on the Supreme Court.
“If anything would make the court look partisan … it would be that — one side ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to,’” Ginsburg said.