Ruth Bader Ginsburg on Retiring: 'I Know I'm OK This Year'

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she intends to be on the High Court through 2017, but is leaving open when she might step down.

In an interview with the BBC posted Thursday, the 83-year-old jurist said she'll take stock "year-by-year."

"At my age you have to take it year-by-year," Ginsburg told the BBC. "I know I'm OK this year, but what will be next year?"

"I'm hopeful, however, because my most senior colleague, the one who most recently retired, Justice John Paul Stevens, stepped down at age 90. So I have a way to go."

In the wide-ranging interview with the U.K.-based outlet, the liberal Ginsburg also weighed in on a free press, America's future, and massive women's marches around the world a day after President Donald Trump's inauguration.

"I've never seen such a demonstration – both the numbers and the rapport of the people in that crowd," she said of the Jan. 21 marches that drew more than a million in Washington, D.C., alone.

"There was no violence, it was orderly. So yes, we are not experiencing the best times but there is there is reason to hope that that we will see a better day."

The President Bill Clinton-nominated jurist also told the BBC that the United States is "not experiencing the best of times," but predicted the "pendulum" will swing back. She carefully did not mention President Donald Trump.

"I read the Washington Post and the New York Times every day, and I think that the reporters are trying to tell the public the way things are," she said.

"Think of what the press has done in the United States," she added, citing the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

"That story might never have come out if we didn't have the free press that we do," she told the BBC.

Ginsburg also said she was "optimistic in the long run" about the prospects for America.

"A great man once said that the true symbol of the United States is not the bald eagle. It is the pendulum," she said. "And when the pendulum swings too far in one direction it will go back. Some terrible things have happened in the United States but one can only hope that we learn from those bad things."

There's been some speculation about another vacancy soon on the nation's high court – including from GOP Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who said Thursday he expects another seat to be opening up this summer.