Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a diminutive but imposing advocate for women’s rights who became the court’s second judge, died Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87 years old. Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court said.
His death just over six weeks before Election Day is likely to spark a heated battle over whether President Donald Trump should nominate and the Republican-led Senate should confirm his replacement or whether the seat should remain vacant until the outcome of his career. against Democrat Joe Biden is known.
Chief Justice John Roberts mourned Ginsburg’s passing. “Our nation has lost a historically statuesque jurist. On the Supreme Court we have lost a beloved colleague. Today we cry, but confident that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her: a tireless and determined defender of justice, “Roberts said in a statement.
Ginsburg announced in July that he was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for injuries to his liver, the latest of his several battles with cancer.
Ginsburg spent his last years on the bench as the undisputed leader of the liberal wing of the court and became something of a rock star to his fans. The young women seemed to especially embrace the Jewish court grandmother, affectionately calling her the Notorious RBG, for her advocacy for the rights of women and minorities, and the strength and resilience she demonstrated in the face of personal loss and health crises. .
Those health problems included five episodes of cancer beginning in 1999, falls that resulted in broken ribs, insertion of a stent to clear a blocked artery, and a variety of other hospitalizations after he turned 75.
He resisted calls from liberals to step down during Barack Obama’s presidency at a time when Democrats were in the Senate and a replacement with similar views could have been confirmed. Instead, Trump will almost certainly try to push Ginsburg’s successor through the Republican-controlled Senate, and move the conservative court even further to the right.
Ginsburg confronted Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign in a series of media interviews, even calling him a phony. He soon apologized.
His 1993 appointment by President Bill Clinton was the first by a Democrat in 26 years. He initially found a comfortable ideological home somewhere to the left of center in a conservative court dominated by Republican appointments. His liberal voice grew louder the longer he served.
Ginsburg was a mother of two, an opera lover, and an intellectual who saw arguments behind oversized glasses for many years, though she abandoned them for more modern frames in her later years. In discussion sessions in the ornate courtroom, she was known for digging deep into case records and being rigorous about following the rules.
She argued six key cases in court in the 1970s when she was an architect of the women’s rights movement. She won five.
“Ruth Bader Ginsburg does not need a seat on the Supreme Court to earn a place in the history books of America,” Clinton said at the time of her appointment. “She already has.”
In court, where she was known as an easy writer, her most significant majority views were the 1996 ruling that ordered the Virginia Military Institute to accept women or forgo its state funding, and the 2015 decision that upheld independent commissions that some states use to draw constituencies.
In addition to civil rights, Ginsburg became interested in capital punishment and repeatedly voted to limit its use. During his tenure, the court declared unconstitutional for states to execute the intellectually disabled and murderers under 18 years of age.
Furthermore, he questioned the quality of the lawyers for the poor accused murderers. In the most divisive cases, including Bush v. Gore in 2000 often disagreed with the more conservative members of the court, initially Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, and Clarence Thomas.
The division remained the same after John Roberts replaced Rehnquist as Chief Justice, Samuel Alito took O’Connor’s seat, and under Trump, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh joined the court, in seats they had occupied. Scalia and Kennedy, respectively.
Ginsburg would later say that the 5-4 decision that settled the 2000 presidential election for Republican George W. Bush was an “impressive episode” in court.
Perhaps she was personally closest on the court to Scalia, her ideological opposite. Ginsburg once explained that he took Scalia’s sometimes scathing dissenters as a challenge he had to face. “How am I going to respond to this in a way that is truly humiliating?” she said.
When Scalia died in 2016, also an election year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to act on Judge Merrick Garland’s Obama nomination to fill the vacancy. The seat remained vacant until after Trump’s surprising presidential victory. McConnell has said he would act to confirm a Trump nominee should there be a vacancy this year.
Contacted by phone on Friday night, Sen. Lindsey Graham, RS.C., chair of the Judiciary Committee, declined to reveal any plans. He called Ginsburg a “trailblazer” and said, “While I had many differences with her on legal philosophy, I appreciate her service to our nation.”
Senate Top Democrat Chuck Schumer tweeted: “The American people must have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president.”
Ginsburg authored powerful dissenters of her own in cases involving abortion, the right to vote, and wage discrimination against women. She said some were aimed at swaying the opinions of her fellow judges, while others were “an appeal to another day’s intelligence” in hopes that they would provide guidance to future courts.
“Hope is eternal,” he said in 2007, “and when I write a dissent, I always hope for that fifth or sixth vote, although most of the time I am disappointed.”
He wrote memorably in 2013 that the court’s decision to remove a key piece of federal law that had secured the voting rights of blacks, Hispanics, and other minorities was “like throwing your umbrella in a storm because you’re not getting wet. . “
The change on the court hit Ginsburg especially hard. She strongly dissented from the court’s 2007 decision to uphold a national ban on an abortion procedure that opponents call partial-birth abortion. The court, with O’Connor still in it, had struck down a similar state ban seven years earlier. The “alarming” ruling, Ginsburg said, “can only be understood as an effort to undermine a right declared time and again by this court, and with a growing understanding of its centrality in the lives of women.”
In 1999, Ginsburg underwent surgery for colon cancer and received radiation and chemotherapy. He underwent surgery again in 2009 after he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and in December 2018 for cancerous growths in his left lung. After the last surgery, he missed court sessions for the first time in more than 25 years on the bench.
Ginsburg was also treated with radiation for a tumor in her pancreas in August 2019. She maintained an active schedule even during the three weeks of radiation. When she revealed a recurrence of her cancer in July 2020, Ginsburg said she was still “fully capable” of continuing as a judge.
Joan Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1933, the second daughter of a middle-class family. Her older sister, who gave her the nickname “Kiki” for her life, died at age 6, so Ginsburg grew up in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn as an only child. Her dream, she said, was to be an opera singer.
Ginsburg graduated at the top of her class from Columbia University Law School in 1959, but was unable to find a law firm willing to hire her. She had “three blows against her”: for being a Jew, a woman and a mother, as she said in 2007.
She had married her husband, Martin, in 1954, the year she graduated from Cornell University. She attended Harvard University law school, but moved to Columbia when her husband took a law job there. Martin Ginsburg became a prominent tax attorney and law professor. Martin Ginsburg died in 2010. He is survived by two children, Jane and James, and several grandchildren.
Ginsburg once said that she had not entered the law as an equal rights advocate. “I thought I could do the job of a lawyer better than anyone else,” he wrote. “I have no talent in the arts, but I write quite well and I analyze problems clearly.”
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