On September 18 Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away at age 87, due to pancreatic cancer. She had been fighting a variety of cancers for over 20 years. The public has grieved Ginsburg’s passing. Despite her occasionally divisive decisions during her time on the Supreme Court, people have mourned her death on both sides of the aisle.
She was born in 1933 to a Jewish family. Ginsburg graduated from Cornell University, and began her law degree at Harvard, transferring to and graduating from Columbia Law School. After graduating, Ginsburg served for a variety of organizations, from Rutgers Law School to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In April of 1980, President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the D.C. Court of Appeals. She served there for 13 years, before President Bill Clinton nominated her to the Supreme Court in June of 1993. On August 10, 1993, Ginsburg joined the court as the second woman to sit among its ranks. Ginsburg served for over 27 years, listened to hundreds of cases and wrote over 200 opinions.
Following Ginsburg’s death, reactions have been mixed on how to proceed. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced soon after the Justice’s death that “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate.” Several prominent members of the Democratic Party and from the media have called McConnell out on hypocrisy, since he had refused to hold a vote for former president Obama’s nominee Merrick Garland because it was an election year.
However, McConnell’s actual statements are far less cut and dry. In February of 2016, McConnell said that “the Senate has not filled a vacancy arising in an election year when (differing parties controlled the Senate and White House) since 1888, almost 130 years ago.” As Republicans now control both the Senate and White House, 2016 and 2020 are not perfect parallels.
Democrats' reaction to this incident differs from their Republican counterparts. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has stated that “nothing is off the table for next year” should Republicans try to appoint Trump’s nominee. Ideas, such as packing the court, stacking the senate (likely through adding Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico as states) or abolishing the filibuster have begun to float within the Democratic Party. There have even been suggestions of impeaching Trump (as an impeachment trial would postpone all other Senate activities). Democratic Leadership had not yet supported any of these ideas.
Presidential candidate Joe Biden has been particularly quiet on the topic, refusing to announce a list of possible justice replacements (a move that President Trump performed a week prior to Ginsburg’s passing). However, Biden has said that the nomination would be an African American woman. Biden has also dodged the issue of packing the court, saying, “It’s a legitimate question. But let me tell you why I'm not going to answer that question: because it will shift all the focus.” Biden, when pressed on this topic during the September 29 debates, reiterated that he will not comment on court packing.
Trump’s reaction to the issue was clear when he nominated Amy Coney Barrett to the court on September 26. Barrett currently is a judge for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. The 48-year-old woman is a mother of seven and previously served as a professor for Notre Dame Law until 2017 when she was appointed by Trump for the Seventh Circuit.
According to reports, Republicans are eyeing a start date of October 12 for Barrett’s confirmation, with a vote coming before the November 3 election. All Republican senators have said they are open for the nominee being brought to the floor, with the exception of Senators Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME). However, Murkowski has suggested there is a possibility of her voting for Barrett.
It is not yet clear how—or if—Ginsburg’s death will affect the 2020 elections. The New York Times reports that they “found no serious evidence that the Supreme Court vacancy has affected the race for the White House. Nor did the polls find much reason to think this would shift the race in the weeks ahead.”
Following the first debate, public opinion has changed little. It’s possible that public opinion will change following future debates between Biden and Trump. Barrett’s confirmation hearing could also rally one of the parties’ bases, similar to how the chaos surrounding Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination rallied Republicans to hold on to the Senate in the 2018 midterm elections. There will be little ambiguity on this issue once the dust settles in November.