Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87
Legal pioneer’s death creates possible nomination fight
WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Friday, giving President Donald Trump and Senate Republicans a rare opportunity to solidify conservative control of the court, perhaps for decades to come.
Ginsburg, 87 and in failing health, had overcome bouts with pancreatic, lung and colon cancer dating back to 1999 but apparently could not beat the most recent spread to her liver. She had announced her latest recurrence in July, again vowing to stay on the court “as long as I can do the job full steam.”
The diminutive New York native leaves behind an enormous influence on the law as the nation’s preeminent litigator for women’s rights, a federal appeals court judge, a Supreme Court justice for 27 years and, most recently, as the leader of the high court’s liberal bloc, where she served as a bulwark against an increasingly conservative majority.
“Our nation has lost a jurist of historic stature. We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague,” Chief Justice John Roberts said. “Today we mourn, but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her: a tireless and resolute champion of justice.”
Ginsburg’s death comes just weeks before Election Day. While Democrats hope to win the White House and potentially a Senate majority, Republicans will hold the Senate at least until Jan. 3 and Trump the presidency at least until Jan. 20, giving them a chance to gain a 6-3 conservative majority on the court.
The president and Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., have little time to nominate and confirm a successor before facing the voters. Should they lose the White House or Senate on Nov. 3, Republicans might have a harder time confirming a Trump nominee during a lame-duck session at year’s end. But McConnell has vowed to “leave no vacancy behind.”
Virtually nothing motivates both sides in America’s culture wars more than a Supreme Court vacancy. One that occurs in a presidential election year and gives a conservative president a chance to replace a liberal justice is even more fraught. The reverse was evident in 2016, when Associate Justice Antonin Scalia’s death prompted Republicans to block President Barack Obama from filling the seat.
The nomination and confirmation process has grown only more contentious since then. Democrats and liberal advocacy groups cried foul at the confirmation of conservative Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch early in 2017. But outrage accompanied Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 50-48 confirmation late in 2018, which followed accusations of decades-old sexual assault that Kavanaugh denied.
Now Trump will select a third nominee, most likely from a recently expanded list of potential justices assembled with the help of conservative groups, including the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation. The president has lauded his two nominees but has been very critical of Chief Justice John Roberts, whose votes with liberals during the past term on abortion, LGBTQ rights and the DACA immigration program made clear his role as the court’s swing vote.
Among those at the top of Trump’s list are Amy Coney Barrett, 48, of Indiana,
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg speaks Feb. 10 during a discussion on the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington.
whom he nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, and Amul Thapar, 51, of Kentucky, a favorite of McConnell’s named by Trump to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.
Other potential female nominees include Joan Larsen of Michigan, who serves on the 6th Circuit; Allison Eid of Colorado, who serves on the 10th Circuit; and Britt Grant of Georgia, who serves on the 11th Circuit.
Ginsburg etched her name in legal history before President Jimmy Carter named her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980. She won five of six cases argued at the Supreme Court in the mid-1970s that opened doors for women.
While remaining a reliable stalwart for equal rights in her later years, Ginsburg had trouble commanding majorities on the court. As the years passed, she became more vocal in her dissents – delivering five of them from the bench in the 2012 term alone, a record that still stands. The closet in her chambers held a selection of her signature lace jabots, some reserved solely for those dissents.
When the court struck down the crucial section of the Voting Rights Act by a 5-4 vote in June 2013 – enabling states with a history of discrimination to escape preemptory Justice Department oversight – she likened it to “throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”
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 accused murderers. 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 – initially Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy
and Clarence Thomas.
Ginsburg would say later that the 5-4 decision that settled the 2000 presidential election for Republican George W. Bush was a “breathtaking episode” at the court.
In 1999, Ginsburg had surgery for colon cancer and received radiation and chemotherapy. She had surgery again in 2009 after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and in December 2018 for cancerous growths on her left lung. Following the last surgery, she missed court sessions for the first time in more than 25 years on the bench.
Ginsburg also was treated with radiation for a tumor on 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 remained “fully able” to continue as a justice.
Joan Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1933, the second daughter in a middle-class family. Her older sister, who gave her the lifelong nickname “Kiki,” died at age 6, so Ginsburg grew up in Brooklyn’s Flatbush section as an only child. Her dream, she has said, was to be an opera singer.
Ginsburg graduated at the top of her Columbia University law school class in 1959 but could not find a law firm willing to hire her. She had “three strikes against her” – for being Jewish, female and a mother, as she put it in 2007.
She had married her husband, Martin, in 1954, the year she graduated from Cornell University. She attended Harvard University’s law school but transferred to Columbia when her husband took a law job there. Martin Ginsburg went on to become a prominent tax attorney and law professor. Martin Ginsburg died in 2010. She is survived by two children, Jane and James, and several grandchildren.
In recent years, she became a folk hero to the left – the subject of the awardwinning documentary “RBG,” an opera and a feature-length film, “On the Basis of Sex.” Her praises were sung on the “Ruth Bader GinsBlog” and her initials emblazoned on “Notorious R.B.G.” Tshirts. She took great pride in a bobblehead celebrating the highlights of her career, and she helped to assemble a book of her opinions, dissents and writings entitled “My Own Words.”
Contributing: Associated Press