Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Says She Is Cancer-Free

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg confirmed that she is cancer-free after various health issues over the years.

In a CNN interview, Ginsburg said her treatment for a malignant pancreatic tumor had been successful, later adding, “I’m cancer free. That’s good.” The tumor was discovered after a routine blood test in July.

This is the fourth time Justice Ginsburg has undergone cancer treatment. In 1999, she was treated for colon cancer, (without missing a day on the bench, The New York Times reported). In 2009, she had surgery for early-stage pancreatic cancer, and in 2018 she had two malignant nodules removed from her left lung.

Justice Ginsburg, 86 was nominated to the supreme court by President Bill Clinton in 1993. She is known for a lengthy and impressive legal career in which she worked to advance gender equality and women’s rights.

Her health issues have caused plenty of concerns that her seat in the Supreme Court will become vacant while Trump is still in office (the president has already appointed two justices in the span of his term). But she has seemed to take her turbulent health in stride, even delivering a biting joke to NPR last July, recalling, ““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 himself dead, and I am very much alive.”