RUTH BADER GINSBURG 1933-2020
Justice’s death applies additional pressure to already heated presidential race.
The death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has put enormous new pressure on the two candidates in a presidential race already roiled by a global pandemic and a summer of civil unrest, raising the prospect of a contentious Senate confirmation battle waged side by side with the campaign and thrusting a constellation of red-hot issues — from abortion and gay rights to religious liberty and environmental regulation — to the foreground of national politics.
The Supreme Court may quickly become a shared focal point for the candidates in a contest that has unfolded, so far, as though the two parties inhabit different universes. Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee is focusing on the President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic, while Trump has countered with dark and largely fictitious forecasts of looming insurrection by leftwing radicals.
The president signaled even before Ginsburg’s death Friday at age 87 that he intended to inject judicial politics into the final stretch of the campaign. He released a new list of potential nominees this month to motivate conservative voters who have grown demoralized during a year of political tribulations.
But it was not clear that his right-wing coalition would be more motivated by a confirmation fight than the alliance of liberals and moderates supportive of Biden would be.
The former vice president has received lopsided support from women, people of color, moderates and college-educated whites — groups likelier to be alarmed than allured by the possibil
ity of a court that tilts far to the right.
In a sign of the extraordinary stakes of the judicial struggle, former President Barack Obama issued a statement Friday night calling on Republican lawmakers not to fill Ginsburg’s seat. Alluding to Republicans’ claims in 2016 that he should not be allowed to replace a Supreme Court justice in an election year, Obama said it was “a basic principle of law” that even such “invented” standards be applied with consistency.
“The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle,” Obama said. “As votes are already being cast in this
election, Republican senators are now called to apply that standard.”
Nevertheless, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican majority leader, vowed quickly Friday night to bring a jurist chosen by Trump up for a vote.
For the most part, candidates up and down the ballot Friday put out statements of mourning and tributes to Ginsburg, rather than comments that explicitly staked out positions for a political fight.
Trump was midway through a speech in Bemidji, Minnesota, when the announcement came of Ginsburg’s death, but his advisers were relieved that the president had not learned of the news until after his
speech was over, campaign aides said, because it meant he had not had to deliver an appropriate reaction in real time.
Hanging over the Republicans’ maneuvering is the emphatic argument by McConnell and his party, just four years ago, that Obama should not be allowed to name Judge Merrick Garland to a Supreme Court vacancy in the final year of his term.
Biden pointed to that precedent Friday night as he paid tribute to Ginsburg at the airport in New Castle, Delaware, after returning from a campaign trip to Minnesota.
“The voters should pick the president, and the president should pick the justice
for the Senate to consider,” Biden told reporters.
Two Republican senators have recently expressed serious misgivings about ramming through a Supreme Court appointment only a few months before the next president’s inauguration.
Sen. Susan Collins, RMaine, told The Times in an interview this month that she would be uncomfortable with seating another justice in October.
“I think that’s too close, I really do,” Collins said of a fall confirmation process.
On Saturday, she said the Supreme Court vacancy should be filled ‘by the President who is elected’ on Nov. 3.
Collins cast a crucial vote in the last Supreme Court battle that helped secure the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, and she has faced backlash from voters in her current reelection fight.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a Republican who opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination, told Alaska Public Radio on Friday that she was against confirming a new justice before the election. She took that position before Ginsburg’s death was announced.
The party holds 53 seats in the Senate, leaving relatively little room for defections, but only a few Republicans have ever broken with the party line on any matters of great importance.