Sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly, it's true. But it is surely unexpected that a Supreme Court justice, of all people, would have to wait so long for deliverance from reckless cruelty. Over and over and over again, year after year since 1980, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has had to endure the sight of her name carelessly rendered "Ginsberg" or some similarly awful facsimile in the pages of the Times. Would the paper deign, even once, to run a correction? No, it would not. Any formal objections were presumably, well, overruled. Until now.

Today the Times finally issued a correction for its misdeeds. The admission was attached to, of all things, a metro story about an award for Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, and how orthodox Catholics opposed the honor because of a stance the justice took on abortion. Ginsburg was mentioned in passing as "Ginsberg."

One might easily imagine a phone call or email of complaint ensued, followed by a frustrated reporter's realization he had been betrayed by his paper's own archive. Then, a few computer searches, a bit more digging to confirm there was no left-field explanation for past errors, and, finally, this:

It would be speculative to conclude that retired Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse was largely responsible for the spelling errors, given the overlap of her lengthy tenure with the period in question. We'll presume her innocent. At least until proven guilty.