Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Passing Ushers a Seismic Supreme Court Shakeup
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a 27 year Supreme Court veteran and tireless advocate for gender equality, passed away at the end of last week. Her passing promises to usher a fundamental challenge to the Supreme Court appointment process - and possibly the future of the United States. Source.
Last Friday, 27-year Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg passed away at her Washington, D.C. home. She was 87.
The death of Justice Ginsburg further shocked a nation already marred by polarization and a pandemic, and the tasteless jockeying for power that immediately ensued in her wake set the stage for a partisan showdown of epic proportions to determine the future of all three branches of government. When future generations look back on the political significance of 2020, all of the tumult and electoral uncertainty accounted for, they will doubtlessly read about her passing. It promises, in the short term and long, to have seismic consequences.
Standing at just five feet tall, Ginsburg towered over the highest court in the land as an peerless champion of equality and women’s rights. Her popularity and profound impact on the judicial landscape of America made her both as both a titanic force on the bench and throughout popular culture.
In the last decade of her life, Ginsburg’s career as a pioneering jurist transcended into one of a liberal icon. Her popularity amongst younger generations — who adoringly nicknamed her ‘Notorious R.B.G.’ — was born from her powerful dissenting opinions, which she often penned amidst a court of primarily conservative men.
In the hours after the Supreme Court announced Ginsburg’s passing on Friday night, collective mourning was effectively undermined by a troubling series of announcements from GOP leaders. Both Donald Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell released statements promising that Ginsburg’s vacancy will be filled by a Trump nominee as soon as possible, presumably before the November 3rd election.
The implications of this brazen power grab go well beyond the court’s immediate vacancy and threaten to fundamentally alter the balance of power in the United States government. The rushed approval of a Trump-nominated judge would give conservatives a 6-3 supermajority on the court for the foreseeable future, while the nomination process itself could drastically affect voter turnout in the 2020 general election.
For Donald Trump, the death of a Justice may be the greatest political boon for his ill-defined re-election campaign. Traditional Republican voters who have been turned off by the president’s strong-armed antics will now be compelled to vote for Trump as a single-issue Supreme Court proxy. For Mitch McConnell and the slew of Republican senators, however, pushing a nominee through Congress would require dizzying amounts of political hypocrisy during their own bids for re-election. Voters will undeniably recall what transpired in 2016, when the Republican Senate refused to vote on an Obama Supreme Court nominee, judge Merrick Garland, on the supposed basis that such influential nominations should not be rushed along during an election year.
Such principles seem now to have now been thrown to the wind in the name of political expediency, and it appears McConnell and company are forging ahead with a Supreme Court shake up that could alter the law of the land for decades to come. Trump announced on Sunday that his nominee will be a woman, and that they will be sworn in “without delay.” As we emerge from this weekend of epic political proportions, here are the three most likely pathways to a confirmation.
The Senate mobilizes at breakneck pace, taking unprecedented steps to vote on a nominee in the 44 days leading up to the election. Republicans hold a slim 53-47 majority, so four partisan defectors is all it would take to foil McConnell’s plans. However, assuming their majority holds, a Trump nominee could be confirmed before Americans ever see the ballot box.
Nancy Pelosi announced over the weekend that Democrats would use “every arrow in [their] quiver” to halt the nomination process. Her most powerful arrow? Impeachment. There could be a scenario where Trump is impeached by the House in order to stall a Republican takeover of the Supreme Court. It would set quite the precedent, but in this political moment, precedent appears to be more of an afterthought. Equally ambitious is the notion that Democrats would simply expand the number of seats on the Supreme Court if Republicans take the 6-3 advantage. Both packing the courts and impeachment remain explosive options in the Democrat’s crisis arsenal.
The third, and perhaps most logical outcome is that voters decide who replaces Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Ideally, Republicans follow the code they themselves created in 2016. The nomination process is put on hold, and either Joe Biden or Donald Trump give the Senate their nominee after Americans exercise their constitutional right to vote.
Regardless of the outcome, tumultuous months lie ahead for the Supreme Court. With Ginsburg on the bench, they found a consistent, unwavering voice of reason. Without her, the highest court in the land falls into a political power vortex that could fundamentally reshape the future of the United States. The legacy of Ginsburg’s life is one of hard-earned and undeniable progress. Now, the nation faces an unsettling dilemma: what will be the legacy of her loss?