I think that's a stretch.

As Sprack notes, in 2014 Ginsburg was an 81-year-old pancreatic cancer survivor. Sotomayor is 69 years old, and the median life expectancy of an American woman her age is 16.6 years. Even if her type 1 diabetes drives down the number a bit, she's lived with it since she was a child. In 2016 Scalia could have expected on average to live another 14.4 years.

Did he mention Thomas and Alito? They were 72 and 70 in 2020, when the Republicans controlled the White House and the Senate. Should they have stepped down?

I would support some sort of term limit or age limit for SCOTUS justices, and I do not have an issue with justices timing their retirements for ideological reasons. But I do not think there is necessarily an obligation to do so. And even if there is an obligation, then RBG, because of her age and health history, was being significantly more reckless than anyone else listed above.

Finally, I wonder how much of this is based on something we've seen even on this board full of very bright people, which is a misunderstanding of mortality probabilities. Many people who hear that US male life expectancy from birth is 76 sometimes mistakenly think that it's a miracle if, e.g., and 85-year-old man makes it to 86, when in reality 90 percent of those who turn 85 make it to 86, and the median 85-year-old man will make it to just shy of 91. I haven't read the entire piece, so I don't know if Barro is falling into that trap.