Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 1933-2020

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away today, September 18, 2020.

In a year of seemingly endless oddities, difficulties and drama, the death of Justice Ginsburg comes at such a time as to seem to fit into the story of the year at a Cosmic level.  Now, added to all of the other drama of the final stages of the Presidential Campaign of 2020, we will have a Supreme Court Justice nomination, and confirmation.

Justice Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Flatbush.  Born to Jewish parents, her father was a Ukrainian immigrant.  She attended Cornell, meeting Martin Ginsburg, the man she would marry, at age 17.  After marrying she worked a variety of jobs while her husband served as an Army officer, having been commissioned following his university graduation through a ROTC commission.  In 1956 she entered Harvard Law School, transferring later to Columbia when her husband took a job in New York.  She thereby became the first woman to publish in Columbia's and Harvard's law reviews.

Following law school she had difficulty finding employment due to her gender. The prejudice against female lawyers was strong at the time, and indeed would be for decades thereafter.  She went on to be a civil rights litigator with the ACLU. Her work lead her to be appointed to the United States Appeals Court for the District of Columbia in 1980, as one of Jimmy Carter's appointments.  She advanced to the Supreme Court in 1993 when nominated by Bill Clinton.

Ginsburg was a formidable intellect and will go down as one of the Court's titans.  Her position on the court can be regarded as having been on the center left.  In recent years she became the focus of the future direction of the Court as, after the resignation of Anthony Kennedy, she appeared to be the most likely justice to step down, due to age or health, or be removed by death.  Now the latter has happened.  It is well known that Ginsburg herself was carrying on in hopes of making it to the next Presidential term in anticipation of being replaced by a Democratic President.

Now she'll probably be replaced by a nominee named by President Trump.  It's clear that the Senate is highly likely to take this up rapidly under Mitch McConnell, but less clear that Republican Senators who are facing difficulties holding on to the Senate will be willing to stake their political fortunes to an act which will be hugely unpopular with Democrats and which will become a focus of the remainder of President Trump's term.  Indeed, to at least some extent, a rapid process on the part of Mitch McConnell, assuming a quick nomination by President Trump, will have a certain appearance of throwing Trump, and perhaps some Republican Senators, under the bus, as the act is likely to be so unpopular with Democrats.  That would also be a concession on McConnell's part, a concession which has already been made as a practical matter, that in the 21st Century United States the Supreme Court is the most important branch of the government.

At any rate, Ginsburg, agree with her positions or not, was a legal giant. Only Anthony Scalia, her friend outside of the court and opposite on the court, rivaled her in that regard.