Ginsburg, women’s rights architect, dead
US SC judge fought against death penalty; death sets off battle over naming replacement ahead of Prez poll
Washington, Sept 19: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a diminutive yet towering women’s rights champion who became the court’s second female judge, died Friday at her home in Washington. She was 87.
Ginsburg, affectionately known as ‘Notorious RBG’ died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court said.
Her death just over six weeks before Election Day is likely to set off a heated battle over whether President Donald Trump should nominate, and the Republican-led Senate should confirm, her replacement, or if the seat should remain vacant until the outcome of his race against Democrat Joe Biden is known.
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate will vote on Trump’s pick to replace Ginsburg, even though it’s an election year.
Trump called Ginsburg an amazing woman and did not mention filling her seat when he spoke to reporters following a rally in Bemidji, Minnesota.
“Our nation has lost a jurist of historic stature,” said Chief Justice John Roberts.
Barack Obama said in a tweet that Ginsburg “fought to the end, through her cancer, with unwavering faith in our democracy and its ideals.”
Ginsburg spent her final years on the bench as the unquestioned leader of the court’s liberal wing and became something of a rock star to her admirers. Young women especially seemed to embrace the court’s Jewish grandmother for her defence of the rights of women and minorities, and the strength and resilience she displayed in the face of personal loss and health crises.
Those health issues included five bouts with cancer beginning in 1999, falls that resulted in broken ribs, insertion of a stent to clear a blocked artery and assorted other hospitalisations after she turned 75.
She resisted calls by liberals to retire during Obama’s presidency at a time when Democrats held the Senate and a replacement with similar views
could have been confirmed.
Ginsburg antagonised Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign in a series of media interviews, including calling him a faker. She soon apologised.
Her appointment by Bill Clinton in 1993 was the first by a Democrat in 26 years. She initially found a comfortable ideological home somewhere left of centre on a conservative court dominated by Republican appointees. Her liberal voice grew stronger the longer she served.
Ginsburg was a mother of two, an opera lover and an intellectual who watched arguments behind oversised glasses for many years, though she ditched them for more fashionable frames in her later years.
At argument sessions in the ornate courtroom, she was known for digging deep into case records and for being a stickler for following the rules.
She argued six key cases before the court in the
1970s when she was an architect of the women's rights movement. She won five.
On the court, where she was known as a facile writer, her most significant majority opinions were the 1996 ruling that ordered the Virginia Military Institute to accept women or give up its state funding, and the
2015 decision that upheld independent commissions some states use to draw congressional districts.
Besides civil rights, Ginsburg took an interest in capital punishment, voting repeatedly to limit its use. During her tenure, the court declared it unconstitutional for states to execute the intellectually disabled and killers younger than 18.
In addition, she questioned the quality of lawyers for poor persons accused of murder. In the most divisive of cases, including the Bush v. Gore decision in 2000, she was often at odds with the court’s more conservative members.
Ginsburg would say later that the 5-4 decision that settled the 2000 presidential election for Bush was a breathtaking episode at the court.
Hundreds of people gathered outside the Supreme Court, singing in a candlelight vigil and weeping as they mourned the death of Ginsburg. Prayer candles with Ginsburg’s photo were also left on the steps. Several times, dozens in the crowd broke into song, singing Amazing Grace and This Land is Your Land.
At one point, the crowd broke into a thunderous applause — lasting for about a minute — for Ginsburg. “Thank you RBG,” one sign read. On the sidewalk, “RBG” was drawn inside a pink chalk heart.