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US SUPREME COURT Justice and liberal icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg died yesterday, opening a crucial vacancy on the high court that is expected to spark a pitched political battle at the peak of the presidential campaign.
Affectionately known as the Notorious RBG, Ginsburg, 87, was the oldest of the nine Supreme Court justices.
She died after a fight with pancreatic cancer, the court announced, saying she passed away “surrounded by her family at her home in Washington, DC.”
Coming just 46 days before an election in which President Donald Trump trails his Democratic rival Joe Biden in the polls, the vacancy offers the Republican a chance to secure a conservative majority in court for decades to come.
Trump, who was informed of Ginsburg’s passing while on the campaign trail, issued a statement praising her as a “titan of the law,” but gave no indication of whether he intended to go ahead with a nomination. .
The accolades flowed to pioneering Jewish justice.
“Our nation has lost a jurist of historic stature,” said Chief Justice John Roberts.
Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama said in a tweet that Ginsburg “fought to the end, through his cancer, with an unshakable faith in our democracy and its ideals.”
Joe Biden said he was “an American hero, a giant of legal doctrine and a relentless voice in the pursuit of that highest American ideal: Equal justice under the law.”
Former President Jimmy Carter called her “a beacon of justice,” while Hillary Clinton thanked her for paving the way for “so many women.”
In Washington, hundreds of mourners flocked to lay flowers and light candles in front of the Supreme Court, where diminutive Ginsburg sat for 27 years, even receiving arguments and speaking out from her hospital bed after repeated bouts of illness over the past few years. two years. .
Ginsburg anchored the liberal faction of the court, reduced to four by two Trump appointments since 2017.
The appointment of a sixth conservative judge could lead to a court that would potentially eliminate abortion rights, strengthen the powers of business and dilute the rights granted to minorities and the LGBTQ community over the past three decades.
Within minutes of the news of his death, the huge political battle had begun, with Biden warning that Trump had no right to name a successor so close to the Nov.3 election.
Democrats are expected to fight hard to force a delay, an uphill battle given the control Republicans have over the Senate, which must approve any candidate.
‘An amazing life’
Ruth Bader Ginsburg sworn in by the Chief Justice of the United States, William H. Rehnquist, right, during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC on August 10, 1993.
Source: Arnie Sachs / PA
Born in Brooklyn in 1933, Ginsburg was a star of law school when women were not studying law and a law professor with a powerful impact in establishing the rights of women and minorities.
He died the night that ushered in Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. According to tradition, those who die during the holiday are revered as a “tzadik” or a person of great righteousness.
Her stature on the court and the death of her husband in 2010 likely contributed to Ginsburg’s decision to remain on the bench beyond his initially set goal, to match Judge Louis Brandeis’s 22 years on the court and his retirement to the age of 82 years. .
Ginsburg had a special affection for Brandeis, the first Jew appointed to the high court. She was the second woman on the court and its sixth Jewish judge, but eventually two other Jews, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, and two other women, Mrs. Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, were joined.
Both developments were perhaps unthinkable when Ginsburg graduated from law school in 1959 and faced the triple specter of seeking work as a woman, mother, and Jew.
Ginsburg testifies at her confirmation hearing after being nominated to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton., 1993.
Source: SIPA USA / PA Images
Forty years later, she noted that religion had become irrelevant in the selection of judges for the high court and that gender was going in the same direction, although when asked how many women would be enough for the high court, Ms. Ginsburg replied without hesitation: “Nine”.
Some credit could be attributed to the equality of the sexes under the law. In the 1970s, she argued six key cases in court when she was an architect of the women’s rights movement and won five.
“Ruth Bader Ginsburg does not need a seat on the Supreme Court to earn a place in the history books of the United States,” said President Bill Clinton in 1993 when he announced his appointment. “She already has.”
Her stage as a magistrate was marked by triumphs for the equality of women, as in her opinion for the court that ordered the Virginia Military Institute to accept women or renounce its state funding.
There were also setbacks. 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 “alarming” ruling, Ms Ginsburg said, “cannot be understood other than 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. “.
Justice once said that she had not entered the law as a defender of equal rights. “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.”
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.
He voted most frequently with the other liberal-leaning justices, Clinton’s nominee Mr. Breyer, and two Republican nominees, John Paul Stevens and David Souter, and then with the two President Barack Obama nominees, Sotomayor and Kagan .
“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.”
People gathered at the Supreme Court in Washington last night after the Supreme Court announced the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Source: Alex Brandon / PA
Electoral problem
Trump, who was campaigning in Minnesota, was on the scene of a rally when the news broke, and journalists informed him of his passing after his speech.
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“Did she just die? Wow. I didn’t know, ”she said. “Whether you agreed or not, she was an incredible woman who led an incredible life.”
He later issued a formal statement in his honor, when the White House and Congress lowered their flags to half mast.
Ginsburg’s death gives Trump a chance to tilt the court to the right, potentially for decades, and the media is reporting that a new nominee could be quick.
But it also has the potential to mobilize voters on the Democratic side.
Trump himself said in August that he would have no qualms about appointing a new judge so close to the election, and last week he unveiled 20 names of possible options, all deeply conservative.
Drawing a line in the sand on Friday, Biden warned: “The voters must choose the president, and the president must choose the judge for the Senate to consider.”
“This was the position that the Republican Senate took in 2016 when the elections were almost 10 months away. That is the position the United States Senate must take today. “
Biden was referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s decision in 2016, in Obama’s last year in office, to block the president’s court candidate so that Trump could name his the following year.
But in a statement Friday, McConnell rejected the idea that it had set a precedent.
“President Trump’s candidate will receive a vote in the full United States Senate,” McConnell said.
The stakes are high, according to Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond.
“The political struggle will be huge because appointing a very conservative person will make this the most conservative court in a century,” he said.
Ginsburg herself was well aware of the risks to her health on court balance, and her fans were concerned about her increasingly frequent trips to the hospital over the past two years.
According to NPR radio, Ginsburg raised the issue this week with his granddaughter Clara Spera.
“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed,” he said.
– With PA reports
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