“We were put in this position of power and importance to make decisions for the people who so proudly elected us, the most important of which has long been considered the selection of the justices of the United States Supreme Court,” Trump said on Twitter. “We have this obligation, without delay!”
Ginsburg, the high-ranking liberal judge, died Friday night at age 87 of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer after 27 years in court. His death gives Trump, who is seeking reelection on November 3, a chance to expand the court’s conservative majority to 6-3 at a time of enormous political division in the United States.
Trump’s short list of potential candidates includes two women jurists: Amy Coney Barrett and Barbara Lagoa, according to a source close to the White House.
Democrats are still furious over the Republican Senate’s refusal to act on Democratic President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland in 2016 after Conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died 10 months before those elections. McConnell in 2016 said the Senate should not act on a court candidate during an election year, a stance he has since reversed.
Despite that anger, Democrats have little chance of blocking Trump’s election. His fellow Republicans control 53 of the 100 Senate seats, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has made confirming Trump’s federal judicial nominees a top priority, said the House would vote on any Trump nominees. .
Obama himself asked Senate Republicans on Saturday to respect what he called the “made up” principle of 2016.
“A basic principle of the law, and of daily justice, is that we apply the rules consistently and not based on what is convenient or advantageous at the time,” Obama said in a statement posted online. “The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental functioning of our democracy, everything depends on that basic principle.”
Potential nominees
Even before Ginsburg’s death, Trump had released a list of possible nominees.
Barrett has generated perhaps the most interest in conservative circles. A devout Roman Catholic, she was a legal scholar at Notre Dame Law School in Indiana before Trump appointed her to the Chicago-based Seventh Circuit in 2017. A Barrett nomination would likely generate controversy, as her strong conservative religious views have pushed abortion rights groups to say that if upheld by the Republican-led United States Senate, it would likely vote to overturn the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade who legalized abortion across the country.
Lagoa has served on the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals for less than a year after being appointed by Trump and confirmed by the Senate in a vote of 80-15. Before that, he also spent less than one year in her previous position as the first Latina to serve on the Florida Supreme Court. Previously, he spent more than a decade as a judge in an intermediate court of appeals in Florida.
Conservative activists for years have tried to get enough votes in the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade. During the 2016 campaign, Trump promised to appoint judges who would overturn that decision. But the court in July, even with its conservative majority, struck down a restrictive abortion law in Louisiana with a 5-4 vote.
The two judges already appointed by Trump were Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. Kavanaugh’s confirmation process was particularly heated, as he faced accusations from a California university professor, Christine Blasey Ford, that he had sexually assaulted her. in 1982 when the two were high school students in Maryland. Kavanaugh angrily denied those allegations and was narrowly confirmed.
Senate Challenge
Republicans risk liberals adopting more radical proposals if Trump replaces Ginsburg, but Democrats win the November election, and some left-wing activists suggest even before Ginsburg’s death that the number of justices in the court should expand to counter Trump’s appointments.
Confirmation votes could also put more pressure on sitting Republican senators in highly competitive electoral races, including Susan Collins of Maine and Martha McSally of Arizona, at a time when Democrats are looking for a chance to win control of that chamber . Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska could also play a pivotal role.
Many court watchers expect Trump to try to replace Ginsburg with a woman. One possible contender on Trump’s roster is Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative judge for the Chicago-based United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit who was under consideration in 2018 before Trump chose Kavanaugh.
This story has been published from a news agency feed with no changes to the text. Only the title has been changed.
.
