If you run into Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg today, be sure to wish her a very happy birthday.

The eldest justice of the U.S. Supreme Court turns 79 today.

The ideology of the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court has always been a topic of discussion and debate, and with hot-button issues before the Court like the health care law mandate, immigration and affirmative action, the chatter is louder than ever. But just where do the justices sit on the ideological scale?

According to a news study, the justices are not a band of judicial activists, as some accuse. Their diverse views largely mirror those of Americans, according to researchers.

“Despite its intentional isolation from popular pressure, the Court’s decisions are not out of line with public preferences,” write Stephen Jessee of the University of Texas and Neil Malhotra of Stanford University in the unpublished paper “Ideological Proximity and Support for the Supreme Court,” according to the Washington Post. “This contrasts with popular images of judges as rogue activists.”

According to the study, the Court’s most conservative justice is Justice Clarence Thomas, whose views lie to the right of 97 percent of Americans surveyed. Justice Antonin Scalia was second, with views that are more conservative than about 89 percent of Americans.

On the other end of the scale, retired Justice John Paul Stevens was seen as the most left-leaning jurist, with views that are more liberal than 85 percent of surveyed Americans. He just beat out Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is to the left of 83 percent of those surveyed.

SCOTUSblog’s Tom Goldstein has pulled out his crystal ball in an effort to figure out who will be President Barack Obama’s next Supreme Court nominee, should the president be elected to a second term.

Ok, the Goldstein & Russell partner doesn’t have an actual clairvoyant instrument. Instead, he used a set of factors that Obama would likely consider in choosing a nominee should Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg resign during his second term. Those factors include, but are not in any way limited to, gender (the nominee almost certainly will be a woman) and race or ethnicity (there’s a good chance the nominee will also be a minority group member) since diversity has been a top priority for the Obama administration.

After considering dozens of possibilities, Goldstein concluded that the most likely candidate would be California Attorney General Kamala Harris.

The former San Francisco District Attorney, whose mother is from India and whose father is Jamaican-American, has “long been well known to the Administration, having been the first California elected official to endorse Barack Obama’s candidacy,” Goldstein writes. At 47, she is also the ideal age to be a Supreme Court nominee in the next three to four years.

But, Goldstein notes, Harris’ own future political plans may not make a Supreme Court nod that appealing to her. By the time Ginsburg retires, he wrote, Harris will either be running for reelection or newly reelected, with her sights possibly set next on the governor’s office.

The U.S. Supreme Court may have jumped the gun by handing down a nationwide abortion rule rather than letting the law develop state by state, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

In remarks during a Columbia Law School event marking the 40^th anniversary of Ginsburg becoming the school’s first tenured female professor, Ginsburg said of Roe v. Wade: “It’s not that the judgment was wrong, but it moved too far too fast.”

“The court made a decision that made every abortion law in the country invalid, even the most liberal,” Ginsburg said, according to the Associated Press. “We’ll never know whether I’m right or wrong … things might have turned out differently if the court had been more restrained.”

It’s not the first time Ginsburg has made that observation, but her comments made headlines over the weekend. Ginsburg also made headlines last week with her comments on whether Egyptian officials should look to the U.S. Constitution when drafting their own.

Comments made by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her recent “listening tour” of Egypt have sparked controversy here in the U.S.

Asked what models  Egyptian officials should consult in drafting the country’s new founding legal document, Ginsburg replied:

“You should certainly be aided by all the constitution-writing that has gone one since the end of World War II. I would not look to the US constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary… It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the US constitution – Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It dates from 1982. You would almost certainly look at the European Convention on Human Rights. Yes, why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world?”

Immediately conservative outlets seized upon the remarks, claiming the Justice was traveling the world bad-mouthing her nation’s founding document. Conservative bloggers, like Redstate.com’s Daniel Horowitz, went so far as to suggest that Ginsburg was “disqualified from serving on any court.”

But others jumped to Ginsburg’s defense – even Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby, who admittedly is “not a fan of Ginsburg’s jurisprudence.”

“I find her too left-leaning and too inclined to see the Constitution as an ‘evolving’ document that can be interpreted in the light of foreign law. … But to accuse her of insulting the Constitution or being ‘mealy mouthed’ in its defense is absurd,” Jacoby wrote.

Jacoby said that the justice’s remarks – like the remarks of many public figures in today’s hyper-politically-charged climate – were taken out of context my those who claims she is anti-Constitution.

“As anyone watching the full Ginsburg interview can see, she went out of her way to praise the US system,” Jacoby wrote. “She extolled the Framers of 1787 as ‘very wise,’ and explained how the Constitutional architecture — separation of powers, checks and balances, judicial independence, amendability — has secured the blessings of liberty for generations of Americans. ‘We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world,’ she said proudly, ‘and it starts with three words: “We, the people.”’”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor isn’t the only one traveling during the U.S. Supreme Court’s winter break. Her colleague, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is on a “listening tour” of Egypt and Tunisia.

Though few details of the justice’s trip have been released – presumably due to security concerns, according to FindLaw – the justice is traveling with her daughter, Columbia law professor Jane Ginsburg. According to the State Department, Ginsburg plans to meet with Egypt’s  top judges and “listen and learn” about the country’s transition to democracy in the wake of the uprisings last year.

Ginsburg’s presence in Egypt and Tunisia is a show of support for officials there, Findlaw reports, and the justice is ready to offer her insights if requested. “Justice Ginsburg would be pleased to answer questions about the U.S. legal system and Constitution,” a State Department press release states.

Ever wonder what Supreme Court justices do when they are not thumbing through briefs, grilling attorneys from the bench or writing long legal opinions? Why, they hang out with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, of course!

At least that is what Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg got to do this week. The justice was one of the guests at the very late-night afterparty following the Washington premiere of Jolie’s directorial debut ‘Blood and Honey,” the Washington Post’s Reliable Source reports.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has twice battled cancer and has since been the subject of speculative whispers regarding whether and when she would step down from the Supreme Court bench, told USA Today that she feels fine and isn’t going anywhere.

Ginsburg said she received a clean bill of health after her most recent annual checkup. Ginsburg, 78, has shot down retirement rumors before, saying that she’d like to stay on the bench until she is at least 82 – the age at which Justice Louis Brandeis retired from the Court in 1939.

But as the next presidential election looms just one year away, speculation over Ginsburg’s future on the Court and the implication of a possible vacancy next term have some left leaning political commentators  openly urging Ginsburg to step down now. In April, Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy wrote that Ginsburg and Justice Stephen Breyer should consider hanging up their robes so that President Barack Obama gets two more Supreme Court appointments before his first term ends.

“If Obama loses, they will have contributed to a disaster,” Kennedy wrote in a piece on The New Republic‘s website.

Sometimes it’s important to disagree – even against a Supreme Court majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told a crowd of female judges this weekend.

Ginsburg, speaking to a crowed of roughly 300 female judges at the National Association of Women Judges conference in Newark this weekend, said that she is not afraid to speak up when she disagrees with a judgment of the Court, the Star-Ledger reports.

“I will continue to speak out in dissent when important matters are at stake,” Ginsburg said.

By example, she referenced her dissent in the case Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. Speaking from the bench, she urged Congress to pass a law allowing women to file unequal pay suits if they learn of the pay disparity beyond the 180 filing deadline under federal law. Congress subsequently passed the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act doing just that.

Ginsburg said speaking out in dissent can even win over fellow justices.

“On rare occasions, a dissent turns the court and becomes the opinion of the Court,” Ginsburg said.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is safe and unharmed after she and 178 other passengers were evacuated from a plane at Dulles International Airport Wednesday after an engine fire was reported by the pilot.

The plane, United Airlines Flight 586, was scheduled to fly to San Francisco and was still on the ground when the Ginsburg and the other passengers were directed to exit via emergency slides. They returned to the terminal and no one was seriously injured.