It's So Lonely Without You

The Supreme Court's sole remaining woman since Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, misses her departed colleague:

"The word I would use to describe my position on the bench is lonely," Ginsburg, 73, said in an interview with USA TODAY.

"This is how it was for Sandra's first 12 years," she said, citing the time from O'Connor's appointment in 1981 to Ginsburg's arrival in 1993. "Neither of us ever thought this would happen again. I didn't realize how much I would miss her until she was gone."

The story mentions their friendship—that they were confidants and each other's support in times of trouble—but also that the pair moved the court beyond tokenism. When Ginsburg laments that they never "thought this would happen again," she means only one seat on the nation's highest court being filled by a woman.

Ginsburg is … disconcerted by the look of her own court. She said with O'Connor, the message was: "Here are two women. They don't look alike. They don't always vote alike. But here are two women." The former women's rights lawyer fears the message now is that a woman justice is a "one-at-a-time curiosity, not the normal thing."

Worse than that, I fear the message is that more than one woman justice is not the normal thing—that we're meant to be grateful for our token representation, and not expect more.