Ginsburg returns to high court after surgery

WASHINGTON -- A healthy-looking Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg returned to the Supreme Court's mahogany bench Monday, less than three weeks after she had surgery for pancreatic cancer. She smiled big as she entered the courtroom, then asked characteristically tough questions in the morning cases.

Ginsburg, who will be 76 next month, underwent surgery Feb. 5, and her physicians have since reported that a 1-centimeter lesion that prompted the surgery was benign. A second, smaller lesion found during a search of her pancreas was malignant and removed.

A Feb. 13 court statement said all lymph nodes proved negative for cancer and no metastasis was found.

Disclosure of her illness, a typically aggressive type of cancer, raised questions about whether Ginsburg might soon step down. She survived colorectal cancer a decade ago.

At a Republican dinner Saturday, U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., spoke of his interest in the appointment of conservative judges and said Ginsburg likely would be dead from cancer within nine months, according to a report in The Courier-Journal, a Louisville newspaper.

On Monday, Bunning issued a statement of regret. "I apologize if my comments offended Justice Ginsburg. That certainly was not my intent. It is great to see her back … and I hope she recovers quickly."

Ginsburg, a 1993 appointee of President Clinton, had said before doctors discovered her pancreatic cancer that she did not expect to step down soon. Her appearance Monday could douse some of the new talk of a possible retirement.

As the court heard arguments in a clash between the U.S. government and the Navajo Nation over a coal lease, Ginsburg was a vigorous questioner. At one point, she introduced a bit of levity into the arcane case that turns partly on how a 2003 ruling in the Navajo lease dispute is construed.

Lawyer Carter Phillips, on behalf of the Navajo Nation, referred to a disputed reading of the prior case. Ginsburg, who had written the opinion, asked, "Do you think that was just carelessness on the court's part?"